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Abstract
There are many different ways a teacher can assess their students in a differentiated classroom. Some ways that a teacher can let their students know what is expected of them is rubrics. Rubrics allow students to know what they will be graded on and allow them to prepare and make sure their project or paper meets these standards. A teacher can show students what they have accomplished by having students make a portfolio of there work in the course of the year. This will allow them to look back on it and allow them to be proud of their work. Teacher's can also allow students to give feedback through self-assessment. This part is just important to the teachers as it is to the students. Students can share their experience and feelings and the teacher can then improve their class based on the feedback from the students.

[|Synthesis Ryan Mountain]
There are many ways to assess students than just [|portfolios], self-assessment, and rubrics. Teachers can assess students many ways and these are just a few. However, it is important for teachers to get to know their students and know what assessments will work the best. Assessing students on their work lets them know what they will need to do, shows them what they have done, and allows them to give their opinion democratically. When it comes to assessing students the important aspect to remember is to be flexible when using [|differentiation]. When reading my classmates reflections over chapter four in FIAE I noticed that some people didn't like the examples of assessing and some loved the examples. I believe as teachers we all have our preferences, but it is important to do what works well for our students.

Kirsten
This chapter looked at portfolios, rubrics, and student self-assessments as three ways to judge a student's understanding of a subject. My favorite is the portfolio because you can use it for anything and, as the book explains, it shows the big picture, not just the "snap-shots" of the students academic year. I feel like it not only gives students a chance to take another look at their work and reflect on it, but it gives them another reason to appreciate what they've done. While some pieces of work would just get thrown in the trash, they now get a second chance to show the student something about themselves and the world.

On the other hand, I do NOT like rubrics. I've always felt they ended up too broad or too narrow and when I've had to follow a rubric for my own work, I tend to get over loaded with information. There is too much info given in one space and I can't process it well. I think it might be a helpful way for some to organize information and determine a grade, and it certainly affords the opportunity for a teacher to provide all the necessary information, but for me, I think there are more efficient ways.

Jordan
This chapter focuses on the three ways that teachers in a differentiated classroom can assess their students for mastery. Though many forms of assessment take place in a differentiated classroom, Wormeli suggests that portfolios, rubrics, and self-assessments are three of the most adequate ways to grade students. As Wormeli discusses these methods, I noticed that he dedicates a majority of this chapter to the advantages of using rubrics. Rubrics are designed to pinpoint evidence of true learning by measuring a student’s proficiency in several different areas of the student sample. He cautions that designing a rubric is a challenge and that identifying the “essential and enduring content and skills” (Wormeli 46) as well as being specific is key to creating a good rubric. In high school, I liked having a rubric because I knew what the teacher’s expectations were and what I needed to demonstrate in order to achieve the grade I wanted. It was not until EDU101 that I became aware of the difficulty that was involved in creating a rubric, for it was hard to create one to judge the quality of a chocolate chip cookie. As a future teacher, I think that rubrics are a great way to assess student understanding and it is something that I want to use in my classroom, but I think that I will struggle to create an effective one.

Sarah
Chapter Four addressed three different methods of assessment including portfolios, rubrics and student self-assessments. While each of these methods are beneficial to providing information about a student’s mastery of a concept, I find a portfolio to be one of the best ways to measure the overall progression of learning. By having a portfolio as a means of evaluation, teachers are able to take the “photo album” view (as discussed in UbDDI), that enables more adequate decisions about total understanding. Also in a portfolio, students are given the chance to self-assess and reflect on their own cumulative work over the course of a grading period. If I was to assign a portfolio as a part of the graded work in my own class, I would most definitely have a rubric to go with it that dictated my standards for organization and the expectations for the quality of the work within. Therefore, I view a portfolio as an all-encompassing means of evaluation.

Brittany
Portfolios, rubrics, and student self-assessment are all important forms of assessment that should be practiced in the classroom. Each form of assessment brings a particular quality into the differentiated classroom. Portfolios are great for having students reflect and pick what they think was their best work. Rubrics clearly spell out the expectations so that the students know how they are going to be graded. This allows the students to work up to the grade they want to achieve. Teaching is all about making sure the students learn, and what better way to check on that than self-assessments? With self-assessments, students can explain what they learned, how they grew, and what they hope to achieve in the future.

Corinne
This chapter discusses the importance of rubrics and how to create them. A rubric is helpful to a student because it tells them exactly what is expected of them. Also, so there is a clear process for the students to look back to while doing their work. A rubric can also contribute to a students self assessment skills because they look at the rubric and then judge themselves on wether they met the requirements. I also like the idea of portfolios discussed in this chapter because it is an organized way to look at a students progress over an extended period of time. In return, in the process of creating a portfolio, students will see their progress for themselves.

Ryan Snowman
This chapter gives descriptions to three important types of assessment; portfolios, rubrics, and student self – assessment. Portfolios are a great way to determine grades because it allows teachers to collect and examine work over a period of time. This is a way to ensure that teachers do not have to make inferences on how well the student understands the material from one sample. Rubrics are great because they are very good indicators of how well students understand the material. Designing rubrics can be somewhat of a challenge because it is very hard to generate a rubric that gives specific feedback, and at the same time, keeps the scores objective and reliable. Student self – assessment is perhaps one of the best ways to differentiate assessment because it provides teachers with great feedback about the project. Personally, I like and will try to use all three of these assessment methods. I think these three types of assessment provide the most effective ways to differentiate assessment.

Ryan
Chapter four of //Fair isn’t Always Equal// deals with three important aspects dealing with the differentiated classroom. The first important aspect from this chapter is a portfolio. Portfolios for teachers are an accurate way to grade students and a great way for students to look back and reflect on their hard work. Also it allows a teacher to see what worked well from year to year. The next aspect of this chapter is a rubric. Rubrics are good for students because they set goals and allow for teachers to see how well their students understand the context. Self assessment by students allow teachers to see how well their students believe they did and is a great way for teachers to compare their own assessment of their students work and give feedback. As a teacher I will try and take this knowledge and incorporate it into my classroom.

Mykayla
This chapter was a general overview of the three most important types of assessments: portfolios, rubrics, and student self-assessment. Portfolios are just a collection of a student’s work and a relatively reliable way to assess a student’s mastery of a subject. This is a great idea because students can look back on it and review what they did wrong so they don’t repeat that same mistake. The rubric section seemed obvious because going to school I have seen plenty of rubrics to know how they are used and what they are primarily used for. The only interesting part was that teachers should not use a five level rubrics because they give parents and students the idea of A, B, C, D, and F even thought that is not the point. The student self-assessment part was also a little obvious. I know that students are the best way to find out if they understand something or not and the best way to get this information is by having them assess themselves.

Jennie
This chapter ties in really nicely with Chapter 10 in Thomas Armstrong's //Multiple Intelligences.// Rick Wormeli talks about three different ways to assess students in a differentiated classroom. The different ways are using portfolios to track students' work, rubrics that student can see exactly what they are getting assessed on, and self-assessment. He talks about how the portfolios are very flexible. They can be as simple as a folder with their work in it, or as complicated as one online like Tk20. Rubrics should be assessed for content, clarity, practicality, and technical quality/fairness. With self assessment, students get input about their grade. Wormeli also talks about using interactive journals as self assessors, by having students record things like the skills and information that they had learned in the unit. I really like the idea of having interactive journals. Having regular journals to write down their ideas about things is a good thing too, but to have the interactive ones where you can record yourself makes it that much more fun for the students.

Drew
This chapter focuses on the importance and use of three different types of assessments. These include portfolios, student self-assessment, and rubrics. This is used in order to provide a photo album as opposed to a snap-shot of student learning. The portfolio is a collection of student work. Not only can you see all the work, but you can also get a glimpse of the learning process, where it was weak and where it was strongest. Rubrics are pretty standard I would think. These days they are used in just about any classroom that I know of. Self-assessment may not be standard, however, it's a valuable idea to use. Who knows more about their understanding than the student them self? The student knows if they memorized instead of understood and will probably own up to it if that is the case.

Tim
Chapter four of FIAE went over three different types of assessments that could be integrated into a differentiated learning classroom: portfolios, rubrics and self-assessments. The chapter jumped right into the pros of using a portfolio as an assessment tool in the classroom. The most important pro, to me, about using portfolios in the classroom was the ability of the portfolio to allow the students plenty of self reflection once the portfolio is complete. The idea of a student being able to see where he/she has come from since the beginning of the school year seems as if it could be a great motivating factor for a student to continue progressing forward. The chapter also went through the proper ways to create a successful grading rubric and Wormeli really reiterated the fact that it is near impossible to create a perfect rubric and that most teachers will revamp their rubrics yearly. The chapter wrapped up by going over a few different ways self-assessment could be integrated into the classroom. This chapter will affect my classroom because it has debriefed me in the ways of creating a fairly potent assessment process in a differentiated learning atmosphere. The chapter impacted me personally because it went into depth concerning integrating rubrics into the classroom, which is something I definitely could see myself using.

Rachel
The appeal of using portfolios in the classroom is that it is a source of formative assessment. This means that it tests students’ progress over time, which I believe is a great way to assess students. By giving my students flexible assignments like this, I can appeal to multiple learning styles. I have done a few portfolios in school and I enjoyed having a finish product and also being able to see all the work I had done over time. I understand how it can be an effective project.

Cara
The three types of assessments mentioned are portfolio, rubric, and student assessment. A portfolio seems like an assessment of learning because it is a large amount of students work. If a teacher chooses to do a specific project as their assessment of the students’ learning then maybe they can use the portfolio idea as well and use both when “wrapping up” a unit. I’ve seen many rubrics while I was in high school and back then I didn’t care for them; I just never liked the one through four system because I had always been used to a percentage grade. Rubrics are effective to use, though, because they students are4 able to see exactly what the teacher expects. I think the suggestion of having the students design their own rubric is a good idea because they will feel like they have more of a say in what they learn and consequently may be more interested in the unit. When I was in high school, the only classes that we were required to give self-assessments were my English classes. Self-assessments are great because it allows students to realize what they really do know and what they are still a little unsure of in a lesson. I think as a teacher I will definitely use all three of these types of assessments because they are all effective.

Scott
With portfolios, interpretations of students' mastery are more valid, and subsequent decisions we make are more effective. When designing a rubric, there are several factors that must be identified. Chapter 4 gives us directions for how to design a rubric. It is important to decide whether you want to design a holistic, or analytic rubric, a holistic grades the major ideas as a whole, it usually takes teachers less time to grade this way, and we must use more discretion. When designing a rubric it is important to keep in mind what you expect a piece that will earn a perfect grade will look like. Student self assessment is a great way for students to receive feedback about how they are doing. This will aid their learning.

Leah
As the title states this chapter discusses three central kinds of assessment for a classroom: portfolios, rubrics, and student self-assessment. All three assessments have the goal of not only showing teachers student progress, but also having the students point out what they learned and what they need more help on. Portfolios seem to encompass both of the other two, therefore I think it would be essential to use a portfolio as a major summative assessment and the other two as formative or lesser forms of evaluation.