Top 6 Strategies To Assess Your Child’s Academic Progress!

A child’s education is a complex phenomenon and simple indicators such as grades may not really reflect a true assessment of your child’s schooling. While assessing your child academic position is fundamentally important for two main reasons: One, if you successfully assess your child’s academic progress at early stages, then it may help you plan your child’s education in advance. Second, based on the child’s academic assessment, the most important decision for e.g.. which career trajectory to follow is to be decided. Hence, with little doubt, assessing the child academic progress must be the parent and teacher’s first priority.

For that matter, the present article will throw light on the top 7 strategies of how can you assess your child’s academic progress!

Classroom Assessment

The most common type of assessment is called the classroom assessment which is mostly done in the classrooms by the teachers. According to a document by the University of Colorado Boulder, the two broad streams of classroom assessments include formative assessment and summative assessment. Formative assessment practices are aimed at propelling the student for further education, while summative assessment practices include grading, reporting, and are usually aimed at determining the child’s competency. Classroom assessments provide insights into the child’s capabilities as well as performance in the school. Hence such assessment is objective in nature and for that matter, parents are advised to be inquisitive regarding the child’s academic position. Parents may ask questions like what are the key strengths of their child? Which areas do parents need to work on? What resources may be helpful? This way, the child can be assessed early which may help make the right decisions about your child’s education at the right time. No wonder, why classrooms assessments are still in fashion!

Also Read: The Core Teaching Methodologies That Every Educator Must Know!

Standardized Testing

In modern countries such as Europe, UK and America, children are often made to go through standardized testing. Standardized testing is a very important process in the child’s education as they determine, which career and what plan may best suit a child. This assessment is particularly important in early childhood because the rest of the educational plan will consequently depend on this important assessment. So much so, that standardized testing is often regularized by State’s statutory laws. Moreover, some of the advantages of standardized testing include: The results are based on a standard metric that is used to assess all the candidates regardless, which means that it is unbiased. More, standardized testing helps pinpoint the child’s weak areas. Finally, standardized testing helps schools to evaluate the child’s progress. Similarly, some of the disadvantages include: the test scores may negatively affect the child confidence. There’s pressure to “teach to the test”. Finally, it may be that scores may not really provide a true picture of the student’s ability. Hence, to sum up, standardized testing is an important assessment tool.

Parent-Teacher Communication

Moving on, the next assessment method includes parent-teacher communication. This method is relatively subjective in nature as the teachers and parents directly interact with each other. In school, this interacting is formally arranged which is called parent-teacher meeting day, which is an exclusive day/ or days within one academic year. Parent-teacher interactions are particularly important because of the following reasons: Parent’s get direct feedback from the teacher, which is very valuable. Second, Parent’s expectations are set right, which means that they are made aware of their child’s true potential. Third, parents are actively made part of a child’s learning process, as parents and teachers collaborate to perform home learning. Consequently, the child feels supported and tries to meet the parent-teacher expectation. Hence, when it comes to tracking your child’s progress, keeping in hard contact with the school teaching faculty is of immense importance.

Also Read: The Pandemic And The Homeschooling Stress: Here Is How You Can Manage That Routine Bulge!

Milestone Checklist and Achievement Charts

Moving forward, another great way to assess your child’s academic progress is through milestone checklists and achievement charts. Typically, objectives and criteria are set which allow students/ parents to see the entire width of children academic success/ performance over the student’s academic years. These checklists are tailored made according to a set assessment criterion. The purpose of these checklists is to evaluate skills, attitudes, strategies, and behaviors and organize the information in a meaningful way. Similarly, achievement charts provide pre-set standards against which an individual’s academic achievement is assessed. Achievement charts are relatively more specific as compared to checklists, as they clearly explain what is expected from the students, and what are the indicators of qualities that are being assessed. Together, both of the aforementioned assessment tools convert subjective information into meaningful objective assessment and provide greater insight into the child’s academic progress.

Student's Confidence

Another very important and meaningful assessment criterion is the confidence level of your child. if your child is doing poorly in school, your child will likely reflect low self-esteem and poor confidence level. On the other hand, it is only obvious that if your child is doing good in school, it is likely to reflect in the good confidence level of your child. In this regard, Course-Related Self-Confidence Surveys are a handy tool, which assesses the confidence with which the student learn their course and acquire skills like mathematical skills, public speaking, and taking an active part in sports etc. The purpose of this technique is to know which exercises in a particular subject excite the student and which exercise makes the student bore. Another advantage of this technique is that it is feedback centric approach that helps parents and teachers to customize the exercises accordingly. Hence, this technique is a great way with which the student academic progress can be tracked!

Also Read: Why We Must Embrace a Growth Mindset!

Reading Rating Sheets

Finally, Reading Rating Sheets is another technique that gauges the ability of the student to take assignment related instructions. Under this technique, the learner’s reaction to instruction is assessed with the help of simple short forms which students fill in response to their assigned course reading. With the help of reading rating sheets, it can be assessed that how interesting, clear, and useful these readings are to students. The student responds to various questions such as time spent reading the instruction, the student’s like and dislike about the reading, any changes that the student would suggest etc. And again, just like course-related self-confidence surveys, reading a rating sheet is feedback centric approach to assess your child’s academic progress.

For a great list of Classroom Assessment Technique (CAT), read more at 50 CAT by www.uky.edu.

Conclusion

In summation, given the complex nature of a child’s education, a simple grading framework may not reflect the entire width of the student’s academic position. For that matter, Classroom Assessment Techniques (CAT) may come in different shapes and forms, depending on the student-parent-teacher objectives and the standardized criteria. Typically, these assessments include classrooms assessments, standardized testing, parent-teacher meetings, milestone checklist and achievement charts, and child’s confidence levels and reading rating sheets. All in all, CAT can drastically help both the teachers and parents in tracking their child’s academic progress efficiently and diligently.

Hiring a tutor is advisable but not necessary, it may be that the child is able to cope up with education and exam pressure and also he/she has supportive parents and elders. However, it is the need of the hour to make things easy for your child. Read here for further clarity on this matter.

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