Assessment

Assessment is always a major topic in schools. Physical education is no exception. It is important to know that the time we spend teaching skills is productive and worth every minute by seeing students learn and improve. However, it can be counterproductive to spend too much time assessing what students know through various testing regimes. To apply effective assessment to skiing, I believe it is important to first let the students know what they are expected to be able to do. As discussed in the Understandings sections, the Understanding by Design model suggests just this. All students learn at their own rate so there doesn’t need to be a hard deadline for a student to show they have mastered the objective. Students should be able to check off the objectives and their own goals at their own rate. Self-assessment models can be used by having students keep a goals journal in which they write their goals down and write when they accomplish them. Teachers can use observation effectively in physical education because it is so clear to see if a student has mastered a skill or not.