Assessment Accommodation - Research Paper Example

Teachers can either make or break their , cliché as it may sound, the essence of that ment encompasses one of the principles of becoming an effective and efficient teacher. Since an educator’s duty is to guide his/her students as they walk through the portals of teaching and learning, a teacher must possess not just content area competence, linguistic proficiency, pedagogic methods and strategies but also skills assessment knowledge and skills to judge students’ abilities and capabilities.

Assessment has been an integral part of the teaching-learning process in our educational system. However, in assessment, there is also two integral parts that need to be discussed: accommodation and modification.Accommodation is a word that can be described as an adjustment of the certain environment or a curriculum format to allow an individual to have an access to the learnings that he could gain from it or to somehow to complete the assigned tasks. An example of accommodation is the use of sign language in the teaching-learning process in order for the student to understand the lesson.

If accommodation is known to be the “adjustment” or “alteration” of the curriculum to accommodate the student’s needs, modification is the “change in curriculum” for the students who cannot go with the actual comprehension process during the class discussion. An example of this is the reduction of the number of assignments for a certain student who has a lower level of comprehension compare to an average student.There are times when teachers commit the mistake of thinking the she is in a classroom with homogenous type of students.

However, in reality students in general are heterogenous. Students have different needs and different weakenesses. Take this status-quo for instance: “Based on Census and Immigration and Naturalization Services records, it is estimated that there are79 million school-age language minority children in the United States. This bilingual population is distributed throughout the United States with heavier concentrations in thesouthwest and northeast. The highest concentration is in the large urban areas.

” (http://www.teachervision.fen.com)Some of the best practices in Assessment modifications are:1. Identify essential vocabulary, content, principles and knowledgeYou need to be sure that your student can understand the language or the vocabulary level that is being used in discussing the lesson. If not, it is important to teach them first the essential vocabulary that they need to understand. Students would just understand the content of a certain subject if they could understand the medium of instruction that is being used.2. Plan hands-on activitiesAccording to Piaget (1985), learning by doing is still important to let the students grasp the essence of the things that they are trying to learn.

Some students are not just cognitive learners. Rather, majority of children are kinesthetic learners.3. Plan different developmentally appropriate assessmentsA holistic approach in assessing student’s progress or waterloo in a certain content area is very important. This is where majority of the teachers fail to understand. A lot of teachers dwell more on cognitive-based assessment without them knowing that it will be more effective for them to use different forms of assessment to get to know the student’s needs or even the student’s improvement.

These are just some of the best yet practical practices for assessment modifications and for accommodating students in special eduication and English-language learner (ELL) programs. Teachers may continually develop different forms of modification depending to the needs of the students. What is important is that the teacher has the right attitude towards helping his/her student attain his/her full potential as a person.References: Barrentine, S.J. (1999). Reading Assessment: Principles ad Practices for Elementary Teachers.

North Dakota: International Reading Association, Inc.Bloom, B.S. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals; pp. 201–207. Susan Fauer Company. A Taxonomy for Learning, Teaching, and Assessing — A Revision of Blooms Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. Addison Wesley Longman, Inc. (2001)