Home | How It Works | Stats Login | Register         Case: Assessment in a New Content Area Mrs. Grace started teaching social studies this school year to middle school students. She started year excited and ready to teach, but is now discouraged. Her content leader has required all of the grade level social studies teachers to administer the exact same summative assessments and submit item analysis reports to her after each assessment. Mrs. Grace is frustrated because this severely limits her ability to teach using her personal teaching style. She also feels that she is not covering the content to best of her ability because she is stuck to giving the 'required' assessments. The students are also frustrated with the assessments because they are all Scantron due to the need to submit item analysis information. How should Mrs. Grace handle this situation? Solution: (Rates are posted for this solution!) Summative assessments are only one aspect to grading and teaching. I agree with the others that you should not let what the state tells you to do frustrate you. Teach the lessons with your own teaching style, give the required assessments and the kids will rock it. My advice- Allow students to showcase their learning to you in a way that makes them excited to learn and you excited to teach. If the summative assessments do not measure what your students have actually learned then showcase that data. The projects the students complete can give more compelling evidence than the assessments can. You can use that information to fix the assessments as necessary or change the weight of assignments to accurately depict what the students have learned.