Republic of the Philippines

Davao Oriental State of Science and Technology

Guang-Guang, Dahican, Mati City, Davao Oriental

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A Research paper

Entitled: Assessment Strategies to increase motivation

In Partial Fulfillment of the course Requirements

EDUC 124: Facilitating learning

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Presented by;

Arnel C. Bentayao

BSEDMATH III

March 6, 2015

Introduction

Assessment strategies to increase motivation

“Potential performance is a product of ability and motivation”

An indispensable part of teaching learning process is assessment. It is commonly at

the end of our lesson plan being termed as “Evaluation”. Lesson plan is incomplete

without assessment. Instructional cycle indeed is not holistic without assessment.

Assessment is at service of learning, thus the phrase assessment for learning.

Assessment is meant to insure that learning takes place. This is really possible only

when assessment process motivates students to learn. Unfortunately, many instances

of assessment as a process does not motivate instead threatens. The question “How

can we make assessment a motivating and facilitating experience?”, will be the main

concern of this research paper. Assessment strategies will make us to make our learner

motivated to learn and feel unthreatened comfortable during our lesson. This

assessment strategies will be a menu for us future teacher to eliminate the negative

connotation of assessment. Principles of assessment will be useful such that students

will not be frown upon. It will challenge to compete for learning rather than to compete

for good scores.

Discussions

Research has shown that good teaching practice can do more to counterpart

student’s apathy than special efforts to attack motivation directly. Five great

progressivity educators who express their views on assessment strategies that will

drives our learner to be highly motivated. Their views contribute a lot of innovation on

our present curriculum today where in various assessment strategies was planned and

formulated.

Richard Curwin in his ten quick strategies book states that assessment will be

done if follow –up through our lesson objectives. Letting them hear the lesson objectives

is the next step. Starting on time, greeting class rule ,encourage student’s humor ,small

changes-big result will be the consecutive steps to follow to achieve the great intensity

of class participation and involvement in any activities.

James H. Macmillan also viewed that assessment will not be threatening if we let

them think positively. We must let them realize that in doing such thing we must be an

optimistic one. Letting them make their own realistic goals will help them a lot to set

their own target coincide with the general target of the class. Taking control of the

climate will increase their eagerness to explore such thing beneficial to them. Lastly,

giving rewards and reinforcement to their scholastic performance will let them realize

that if they strive to learn, they will ripe the fruit of their labor.

Janel Cox, an elementary education expert enumerated the ways on how to

boost our student motivation. These must include book bingo strategies, read and

review strategy, thematic book bags, lunch bunch, character questions and additional

ideas. Cox further expound that a teacher will always be the key to implement the

strategies successfully.

Freemen, Anderman and Jenssen (2007) elaborated that assessment will be

motivational by making it real, providing choices , balancing the challenge, seeking role

models, establishing sense of belonging , adapting supportive style, strategize with

struggling students. The three great educators emphasized that we must addressed our

assessment to the struggling learners because those intelligent learners are already

motivated. Those learner who has struggling in class must be motivated more to arise

his/her belonging to the class.

Meltzer (2002) and Hamann (2004) views that student motivation will be

maximize if there is a connection of evaluation to the students life. Creating safe and

responsive classroom, students interact with each other about the text, focusing on

authentic literacy task, encouraging critical literacy, using technology, constructive

learning, generating questioning skills , connecting engagement to improve proficiency

and developing metacognitive skills.

My Analysis

In my own view, assessment must be authentic tool for learning. Learning is

proven as accessing as analogous to eating as pudding. Accessing their learning is not

an easy task. You need to consider their needs and interest to boost their eagerness

and motivating themselves to learn something. But how to increase their motivation?

This is through assessment strategies that can increases motivation. Assessment

strategies are means to maximize the intensity of our learners to challenge their selves

to learn more through the driving force that causes them to do something beneficial for

them. A motivation can be maximized by the students if we keep on employing the

various theories affecting motivation. It must allow and follow the clarity of our learning

objectives of every lesson that clarify to them the target that they must have to work on

and the criteria to be consider in evaluating their learning. After the clear presentation of

the learning objectives, it is vital to them to make their own target by reminding

everyone to coincide their personal target with general target. If they are given a

freedom they will feel unthreatened and comfortable. Lastly, let us engage them in a self

–assessment wherein they are the one who access their performance because they ae

already oriented on the task to work on and it will also empower them to take more

action role for their own learning process.

The different strategies suggested above will somehow guide me to make some

change in dealing with my diversified learners with the aid of my sense of humor,

student feel comfortable. Everybody is excited for assessment because the two kinds of

motivation are present in the class. It becomes beneficial to both students and teachers.

Since students aim for learning was achieved through good methodologies of the

teacher. Teacher can now assess his or her ways if there is a need to reject, revise and

retain the ways of delivery in instruction. Teacher also must see to it that their ways of

teaching suits to the student’s ways of learning. Hence, to improve our students

performance let us keep on educating ourselves with newly develop assessment

strategies for better and quality delivery of lesson in our daily discussion. Time will come

that assessment will never be a scare crow for students because our ways of handling

their diversity is not a dictatorial form but it is in a fair participation. In addition

assessment does not take place only at the end of the lesson. The pretest for instance

is a form of assessment that is done at the beginning of a lesson, helps us determine

how much we knew and did not know about the lesson. Pretest can be useful in

increasing motivation of our learners in which their learning becomes more focused

rather getting a high score since the learned to the point of mastery that their score will

improve on the post test. Aside from the three suggested principles for increasing

motivation, we must practice criterion referenced test rather than norm referenced test

by letting compare their performance against criteria rather than comparing student’s

performance to their classmates. Another thing is we need to put more inspiration to our

learners to have their mastery focus rather than performance focus because if they fail

to perform well, nothing to worry about because there is always a room for mastery. We

must see to it that our strategies must be sensitive and constructive because it may lead

to emotional impact. We must not judge them in harsh way because it will affect to their

self- confidence and will kill their spirit that may soon leads to negative views of

themselves and the subject.

Reference

K6 educator. About.com/ book resource/ boost –your- students_motivation.html

www. Ascd.org/publication books/107304/chapters/student_motivation_and_achivement

.aspx

www. Open polytechnic.ac.nz/study-with-us/student_goals_and_motivation/strategies

www. Ascd.org/publication books/109110/chapters/ten_quick_strategies..aspx

serc.carleton.edu/NAGT workshops/affective/in increasing motivation. Html