Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning: How Do You Know What They Have Learned?

I think that a lot of English teachers, especially in secondary education, sick with their go to when it comes to assessment. Nine out of ten times this assessment is in the form of an essay. The assessment could be a traditional essay format or a quiz where students respond in one or multiple short essays. However, assessment for literature needs to be so much more than just learning how to write an essay. While it is important for students to learn how to compose a paper it is also just as important for them to be able to show their knowledge on something they have read in other forms as well.

Sometimes students are given multiple choice, fill in the blank, or other short test methods to test their knowledge on literature. Usually students don’t face this method until they are taking an important test such as the SAT and if teachers haven’t introduced this style of assessment for literature before hand the student can feel overwhelmed or confused. We as teachers need to be knowledgeable of as many forms of assessment as possible, ones that we are sure our students will face as well as some other less common forms. This will help ensure that they are as prepared for any method of assessment that is thrown their way in the future whether that is in another class in high school or in their college career.

Assessment for literature can come in many different forms and it is important that teachers use a variety of assessment methods to ensure that they are helping their students learn as much as possible. A variety of assessment methods can also be helpful when you have students with different learning styles, which is always, so you have a more accurate measure of what all your students have learned.