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Kelsea Trefethen
Chapter four of //Fair Isn’t Always Equal// presented three major ways of assessing student progress: portfolios, rubrics, and student self-assessment. It is difficult to decide how to fairly assess student especially in a differential classroom. These three ideas were really beneficial for me though. A portfolio is probably the type of assessment I favor most. I like the idea of having a big picture to look at. I think it is crucial for educators to consider the student’s work as a whole in order to properly and fairly assess their achievement. What I like most about portfolios is that they are sort of like timelines, which are not only useful tools for students and teachers but also nice collections of memories. Portfolios also allow students to reflect their work both as it is completed and later on in the future. After reading this chapter rubrics seem like a nightmare. I am a perfectionist, so I can see myself obsessing over every detail of a rubric; making sure I have include everything. Rubrics are a steadfast way of grading. As discussed in class it is important to have a rubric so that you have reasoning for every grade. A rubric eliminates the possibility of any bias. The last type of assessment, student self-assessment, is another favorite of mine. I think it is important for students to grade themselves and observe their own progress. When student get an opportunity to reflect the work they have done it helps them take ownership of their education. Grades should not be given, grades should be earned, and when students self-assess they can better understand how each grade has been earned

Johnny Buys
Chapter 4: Three Important Types of Assessment Wormeli establishes three assessments that encourage fair assessment and provide opportunity for tiered learning. The first assessment Wormeli recommends are portfolios. He argues that portfolios’ “longitudinal nature and the big picture they provide of students’ development” result in a comprehensive reflection of students’ mastery or understanding of a subject versus the vulnerable single sample, high stakes test (43). Part of portfolios’ strength is their ability to encourage students to self-assess and reflect (43). Any teacher can recognize the benefits of an assessment that presents ample evidence and encourages success while promoting understanding for reflection particularly on the entire extent of the content not just what students can save in their short term memory and regurgitate for a single instance. The second type of assessment that Wormeli encourages are rubrics. Rubrics need to identify particular aspects in order to be effecting namely: “what the task requires, what constitutes proficiency in the task, whether some steps are more important than others, and whether our criteria are clear to the performer of the task” (45). To synthesize this would be as simple as content, clarity, practicality, technical quality and fairness, and sampling in order to create the most effective rubric (45). Holistic or analytical style rubrics become important depending on what sort of outcomes the teacher desires from their student. Rubrics create the opportunity for teachers to establish a wide set of guides for assessment on a very objective structure that is important for generating appropriate feedback. The final form of assessment that Wormeli encourages are student self-assessments. Student self-assessments give students the opportunity to gauge and reflect on their own understanding in a medium that the teacher can appreciate directly. Each of these assessments is arguably important to incorporate into classrooms. .

Leanne Fasulo
Chapter four of //Fair Isn’t Always Equal// continues informing teachers on the best ways to assess students. The first section highlights the importance of portfolios. Teachers can have an accurate collection of students’ improvements through out the year when making a portfolio. One of the best things about portfolios is that they are completely flexible. The can be a combination of digital and hardcopy works including anything from recordings to poems. Teachers can send the portfolios home with the students to show the parents they are learning new things or the teacher can hold on to them for the end of the year. The second section touches upon rubrics. Teachers who do not create a rubric have the chance to be bias in their grading, and would not have anything to show administrators if a grade was in question. Having a rubric makes the teacher prepared and can give something concrete to the students so that they will know what is expected of them. One thing to be in mind when creating a rubric is making the sections in numbers or 2,3,4, or 6. If a teacher uses five sections parents and students could interpret the sections as an A, B, C, D, F. The last section writes about student self assessment. It is important for students to assess themselves so that they know what they have done well and should continue doing, and what they should improve upon. This way when it comes time for another project the student will have already set up goals, and have provided both the student and teacher important feedback. This chapter gave some good ideas, and I probably will use all three suggestions that it gave. I really liked the portfolio being an English teacher I can collect all their writings and see how they have changed over the year. I will most definitely be creating rubrics in my classes, and having the students self assess their work.

Brittany Blackman
The fourth chapter talks more about assessments, but is focused more on grading them. The chapter talks about portfolios as an option for assessments. I think portfolios are very powerful if you do them correctly. It allows for a “big picture” of the student opposed to a “snapshot”.

The chapter spent a lot of time discussing rubrics. I liked the exercise of designing a rubric for oddball things, such as ordering pizza or tying your shoes. When I thought about it, I did get caught up in the step-by-step process. I’m glad they included that analogy. I think rubrics are an important topic to discuss, because I don’t fully understand some of the things they talked about. One of these being that you should shy away from listing five standards on your rubric, because the students and parents relate these to letter grades. What I don’t understand is why that is bad. Don’t teachers relate these to a letter grade as well? Five is outstanding, four is better than average, three is average, two is below average, and one is you didn’t even try. That is the same as a letter grade system; the letter grade system just doesn’t explain what you need to do in order to receive that grade. So are they saying that we should shy away from letter grades in general? What else would they suggest in a rubric setting? I know they suggest writing a different number of standards, but what do they think we should do in terms of converting that rubric into a solid grade?

Christina L Quach
Chapter 4 described three important types of assessment which included student self-assessment, portfolios, and rubrics. An important thing teachers must remember when making rubrics is that too much detail is not a good thing. A lot of detail can lead to loopholes and confusion while grading. It is important to keep the rubric details clear and easy to understand and so that teachers grade fairly. Portfolios are a way that teachers can examine a student’s learning over a period of time. It provides a more accurate way to examine a student’s understanding and growth during a unit. Wormeli says that, “A student’s self-assessment is an important aspect of successful differentiation. It provides invaluable feedback and helps students and their teachers set individual goals.” (51) I completely agree with the important of self-assessment and also agree that it can motivate students to focus on achieving the best score possible. More in college I have experienced these and what I like about them is that I only look at what is in the box labeled 4. It makes it easy for me because I can see the set goal and there is no reason for me to look at the other boxes because I am capable of achieving the higher scores. All three of these assessments will be great in my classroom because they all focus on setting and achieving goals. These assessments can all be combined together in a unit to get the most out of my students, better understand them, and experience their personal and intellectual growth.

Richie Johnson
Chapter four of Rick Wormeli’s //Fair Isn’t Always Equal// provides “three important types of assessments,” just as its title suggests. The first one, the portfolio, has proven overtime to be a very effective tool in assessing a student as it compiles their work over an extended period of time. As Wormeli articulates, “because of portfolios’ longitudinal nature and the big picture they provide of students’ development, teachers don’t have to make as many inferences of students’ mastery based on single samplings (a.k.a. tests and quizzes)” (Wormeli 43). The idea alone of not having to make judgments based solely off of tests is refreshing! Portfolios are absolutely something I will consider, and likely venture into my classroom. The next item on the list of “important types of assessment” is the rubric, which is quite familiar. I have seen the rubric countless times, making appearances in essay prompts, projects, and the like, but I have never been dismayed at the sight. In fact, I have always appreciated when teachers would include a rubric, as so I would have a set form of all of the things I was to be judged on. Although it is important for rubrics to be clear, I believe it to be important that it leaves plenty of opportunity for student creativity. As so, when designing a rubric, it is essential that it is designed to recognize student understanding, and not to tell the student how to go about demonstrating their understanding. Lastly is Student Self-Assessment. This involves the student identifying their own capabilities and growths, which I believe to be a very strong tool. In distinguishing their heightened abilities from their weaker abilities, students will be able to get a clear picture as to what they ought to focus more attention to. As time goes on, Wormeli suggests the importance of having students discover their growths. This can be done in many different ways- I really like the example he gives that proposes having students’ write the same prompt twice, once in the beginning and once at the end of the term, and then having them analyze and mark their growths. In doing so, students will build confidence!
 * //Fair Isn’t Always Equal//: Chapter 4**

Kalib Moore
I found Chapter 4 of //Fair Isn't Always Equal//, to relate the most to my life so far. It covered the "Three Important Types of Assessment" Portfolios, Rubrics, and Self-Assessment. Fortunately, I have been aware of all three types of assessment and have worked with all three types of assessment during high school. For my woodshop class, our teacher had us take a picture of our final product for each project we had for the class, print out the picture, and write a paragraph on the back of how we felt the project worked, what we thought should have happened differently, and what changes needed to be made in the future. We would then place the picture in a folder, and that was our portfolio. It was a good chance for us to preserve a good piece of work and at the same time give feedback to our teacher. Rubrics and Self-Assessment have always been a part of my education. Each semester I have had at least one teacher use either a rubric or self-assessment. In my future classroom, I plan on using a rubric because I have always felt that rubrics are a very organized way of giving directions and making sure students can self-assess and complete all assignments thoroughly. In the book, Wormeli explains that "Rubrics are so powerful as assessment tools, it's worth getting good at designing them." (44) He goes on to explain a few steps on how to make a good rubric that will be understandable for students and help you in the assessing process.

Tyler Oren
Chapter four of //Fair isn’t Always Equal//, covers just what one would expect from a chapter titled //Three Types of Important Assessment//. Author Rick Wormeli covers each of the three types he consider significant, portfolios, rubrics, and student self-assessment in broad descriptions and gives examples and suggestions of each throughout the chapter. Wormeli discusses portfolios first and describes their use in a differentiated classroom, because portfolios allow students to reflect on their past work and progress, and analyze and rationalize their assignments and choices throughout the year. Wormeli puts a great deal of emphasis on rubric design and creation in this chapter and lists several guidelines and rules to create an effective and accurate rubric. Wormeli’s suggests to teachers that their rubrics account for everything they want to assess, assess the product in the best way possible, ensure that a student with a sophisticated mastery of the content can score well on it, and conversely prevents a student with a weak grasp from scoring well, and after the rubric’s completion and use in grading the product reflect on how it can be improved. Wormeli continues to outline rubric design guiding teachers to use matching parallel parts of speech in the language used to describe the desired goals in the rubric to avoid confusion, and lastly recommends that teachers describe the most sophisticated markers of success on the rubric and become increasingly vague as the score decrease in order to steer students toward higher success and challenge. Similar to the portfolio Wormeli discusses student self-assessment as a means of assessment that allows students to think and reflect on their work and progress, he asks that teachers give students suggestions when describing their progress that covers a broad range of feelings and intelligences. I found the section of rubric design the most helpful part of the chapter, especially the section where Wormeli suggests steering students towards greater success and achievement by describing the more sophisticated goals on the rubric most clearly the most effective strategy he mentions in the chapter, and one I hope to remember when I design my first rubric so that I may push my students to succeed further.

Cyril Lunt
Wormeli does it again by writing a very engaging chapter about the three important types of assessment: portfolios, rubrics, and self-assessment.

He describes portfolios as a great way of assessing a student's work over the course of the year, instead of a high stakes test. This reflects a student's learning more thoroughly, and even shows how much they've progressed over a year. In classes where I've had to do portfolios, I can see marketable differences between my attitudes and style at the beginning of a semester/year and the end of it.

The second type of assessment, rubric, can be best described as "good, but complicated". Whereas portfolios show the progress a student makes over a certain period of time by merely existing, rubrics are used while grading a project or assignment. It shows off an expectation that the students should meet, and explains what a student needs to do in order to get a certain grade. This seems to be the most used way of assessment of the three, in my experience.

Student self-assessment can be done multiple ways, but the most I've seen is the Likert scale. Actually, that's the only real time I've seen it used, with very few exceptions. I have mostly negative feelings about the Likert scale, because much like standardized tests, they can be inauthentic. Students might just see it as busy work and simply put an 'x' on "agree" for all of them. I know I do.

Kyle Kuvaja
In chapter four of //Fair Isn’t Always Equal//, Wormelli details three important types of assessments: portfolios, rubrics, and student self-assessments. Portfolios, in his opinion, are an ideal way to evaluate students in a differentiated classroom. A portfolio shows a timeline of progression through the “big picture” ideas of the class. If a teacher grades a student on a single assignment basis then they are not attaining a valid assessment of their mastery of the content.. The creative process of a portfolio allows students to reflect on their work and growth as a learner. Rubrics are another important type of assessment. While rubrics seem simple, Wormeli stresses how much work must be put into developing an effective one. When designing a rubric make sure to address all necessary content and skills required, acceptable evidence, describe the highest score, what type of rubric (holistic or analytic), determine the levels of achievement, write a description of each level, and then finally test effectiveness (46). The importance of self-assessment is it allows both teachers and students to set goals. Self-assessing and goals are an important part of a differentiated classroom. After reading the chapter, I realized that the education classes at Farmington have already utilized these three forms of assessment. In EDU 101 with Dr. Theresa, I distinctly remember the numerous self-assessments, rubrics, and our single end of the semester portfolio. All three of these assessments were some my favorite parts of her class. Self-assessments always felt like I had some say as to what grade I deserve. I typically try to put forth a lot of effort and expect that my grades should reflect that. When I receive a rubric in a class, I tend to let out a big sigh of relief. Knowing what is expected of me and what I can do to achieve an A, check plus, or gold star is important. The portfolio was so much fun to reflect back on our semester in EDU 101.

Evgeni Bouzakine
Chapter four outlines three types of assessments: Rubrics, Portfolios, Student self-assessment. Each provides different way for helping teachers and students. Rubrics show students learning objectives, so they know what they need to do to have a full understanding of an assignment. Rubrics can be easy to incorporate into any lesson plan, especially into a backwards design lesson. Portfolios on the other hand allow teachers to assess students’ achievements of a period of time. The portfolio can be used over a quarter, trimester, or half the year to look over assignments. It does not have to only be limited to assignments; it can also be for test or projects. The last assessment is Student Self-Assessment. Self-Assessments allow students to analyze and look back on what they have learned over that period of time. This type of assessment also provides feedback to the teacher what the student has learned or not learned though out the year. When I am I teacher I would like to use rubrics. It gives student an idea of what they need to do to get the highest grade possible. It is an easy way for a student to know what is expected of them in a project or essay assignment. I like the Self-Assessment; it could provide a good tool to understanding your students’ accomplishments.