Chapter 10

This chapter talked about assessment and the MI theory of assessment. I learned that the MI theory of assessment is close to the perspective of a growing number of educators who have argued that authentic measures of assessment probe students’ understandings of material more thoroughly than multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank tests. One of the reoccurring things I noticed in this chapter was the importance of authentic assessment. The book states that authentic measures allow students to show what they learned in context- meaning that they are showing what they learned in the same environment they learned it in. I also learned that MI theory supports the belief that students should be able to show competence in subject, skill, context area, or domain in any one of a variety of ways. The biggest thing that I got out of the chapter that will greatly impact my classroom and my lesson plans is that any subject can be assessed in at least eight ways. MI theory talks about teaching in eight ways but it also believes that a teacher should be able to assess students in eight ways. There is a need to provide students with assessment experiences that include access to a variety of methods of presentation and means of expression. The fact that as teachers we need to be thinking of assessing students that satisfy each of the eight intelligences will impact the way I design my lessons and the way that I design my assessments, whether they be formative or summative.