Assessment and Testing

This evening's class was about the question how to assess and test our future secondary school students.

After listening to Iñaqui's speech I can see that assessing the students is not an easy task.

One has to take into account many other things than just the final assessment. 

It is suggested that when assessing the students it is not only very important  to consider qualitative factors but also quantitative factors.

When deciding your students' marks, whether to give a pass or a fail or to increase the students' marks you can also make use of elements like students' participation in the classroom as well as reading, writing and listening exercises or even by checking who has and who hasn't done their homework.

Therefore, to what extent do we really need an exam to find out our students' learning curve?

Personally, I think that each person studies differently. Some of us leave it all for the last minute and others prepare their exams thoroughly. Some students may prepare an exam very well and still fail because they have not revised the points that have come up in the exam, so is it really the right way to evaluate students' work?

What about if a student had a bad day? The exam does not take these substantial and circumstantial factors into account.

In fact, one week after the test we seem to have forgotten everything, so what do we gain from this?

All in all, life is already a test so why making our lives so difficult with so many exams?

Exams increase our workload as teachers and anxiety among students, so what is the real point of going through the pain of having the students sit exams or us preparing them? Can we not find alternative ways to evaluate our students without going through the hassle?

Do we not have enough feedback by just watching their daily work and improvements?

I guess it is also a good way to observe and correct our students' mistakes or doubts but my opinion as a student and as a future teacher is somehow divided but if I had to choose I would go for continuous assessment.