Weekly App Practical – Assessment

                   

             

                       Weekly App Practical – Assessment

 

      Assessment plays an essential role in the process of learning and motivation. The types of assessment tasks that we ask our students to do determine how students will approach the learning task and what study behaviors they will use. A Montessori early childhood classroom environment is unique in the way teachers assess children. You won't find testing, quizzes, and grades within a Montessori environment. Without formal tests and quizzes, how does a Montessori guide know the progress of a child? 

       In a Montessori classroom, we are not focused on the end product but the process instead. 

"In a Montessori environment, the teacher works in concert with the children to drive the curriculum. While we naturally follow a rich scope and sequence for teaching across the content areas, we are also constantly assessing to see: (1) if the content is resonating with each child, and how; (2) where each child's own interests reside and how to support this self-discovery; and, (3) in what other ways content can be shared with children so that learners of all styles can find meaning in their work. This process of Scientific Observation is the cornerstone of assessment in a Montessori environment."

                                                                                                                   - Montessori Madmen

     In the Montessori classroom, the formative assessment considers the whole child's development and makes assessments based on observations of the child. This type of assessment is essentially ongoing progress monitoring every day to check for mastery and understanding. Formative observation can occur both while a teacher is giving a lesson and when taking the time to step back and observe. Since there is a scope and sequence to the Montessori materials in our classroom, we use a mastery sheet to track student progress. This lets teachers know what lessons a child may be ready for following and what skills and concepts have been mastered. We won't move forward to the next one until this student fully masters the lesson. We ask questions or let the student teach the whole lesson to check whether they got it. I consider this process as a summative of an individual lesson. In a pre-primary classroom, summative assessment measures a child's progress at a specific end period; we don't have any test.

      Montessori assessment may not look like a “traditional” school assessment, but it is a detailed, rigorous, and personalized process for each student. As students age, they are faced with more rigid structures and eventually take part in the same standardized tests that their peers in other schools complete. Most students consistently perform well on these types of assessments and understand that there are many different important ways to display what they know.