In this current of learning, students are getting quite high marks in learning. It is because most of the questions given require them to remember what they have memorized while revising. Assessments are to check on the level of thinking of the student. We are basing this on the standards and the level of the assessment in exam takers and content that the state provides. For this reason, the results of the students are relatively low.
When we look at schools today, you will find out that most assessments have their basis on the ‘thinking-level’ whereby this is the level of thinking that is very low according to the taxonomy of Bloom. Some researchers found out that three percent of the assessments today only ensure that the students have a high level of conceptual thinking and that five percent of the students have a higher level of thinking skills that are of any kind. The other remaining percentage of the work sampled, which is a more significant percentage, only ensures that students’ low level of thinking skills, like calculating, recalling, and using formulas to work out everyday problems in a textbook.
Alignment between higher-level thinking and assessments
Now that most of the assessments today have their basis on the students’ level of thinking, which are low, teachers need to up their the game and can assess their students based on the levels of how a student has that level of conceptual understanding. When the teachers base their assessments on memorization only, students will only think that assessments only base on them(students) knowing how to memorize what they have learned in class. Teachers have to increase the assessment level of the students’ work. Whereby the student has to use thinking critically before answering a question.
Applying real-world high-level thinking
One important method that a teacher can use to improve students’ level of thinking is by using real-life examples based on the students’ knowledge. When a teacher introduces new kinds of assessments, tasks, and materials, the student’s level of thinking will move from just low-level thinking to higher-level thinking. When doing this, a teacher just first examines the content standards and then looks for new ways of how to conduct evaluation of student performance.
Assessment examples that will use a higher-level of thinking
- If one currently has a phone, let him compare and contrast his phone with another phone to find which phone provides the best services. Or maybe one should try to get new phones from two different companies and also compare.
- Applying software like excel or any other software generates a chart that shows how much a particular phone costs.
- And then deduce which phone is better than the other.
Example situation
An organization donates forty-five dollars to facilitate a project that is in the school.
- In your groups, you are to find every possible way you can use to carry out the project without going beyond forty-five dollars.
- Using software for presentation shows that the project you are carrying out is significant and will positively impact society.
Conclusion
When teachers are giving these assessments, they also have to analyze if the work they are giving their students suites them. Because a teacher may think that he is giving work that will make the students’ thinking-level go up, not knowing that he is breaking the student mentally, so precaution must be there when assessing the students.
