Source: Jewish Educational Leadership. Fall, 2011
Laya Solomon examines multiple uses of assessments to aid the learning and teaching processes, providing practical suggestions based on research. She focuses on pre-, formative and affective assessments.
Despite their numerous benefits, assessments today still carry negative associations most often relegated to the dreadfulness of grades. This paper attempts to draw attention to other uses for assessments, and more importantly, to showcase assessments that needn’t, and sometimes shouldn’t, be graded at all. It is the intent of the paper that, through highlighting different forms of ungraded assessments, the readers will come to recognize the true value of assessments in informing, motivating, and guiding instructional change. Pre-assessments, ongoing formative assessments, and affective assessments, are all evaluative tools that are potentially information-saturated, but grades-deficient.