Using Assessment To Guide Instruction: Put It Into Practice

Develop an Assessment Schedule

In this activity, you will create a schedule of classroom assessments to use throughout the year.

The workshop participants raised several important questions about classroom assessment including how much to assess, when to assess, and what to assess.

Although assessment occurs daily, it is critical that specific assessments are in place and documented in a systematic way, to provide ongoing information about student performance and growth.

Consider the statement by Dr. Paratore:

You could learn about children's literacy behaviors, performance, and interests in almost all areas of the day. What the effective teacher needs to do is develop some framework, some system for collecting and making sense of that data.

This activity will help you develop a framework for assessing and documenting student performance throughout the year -- plan to ensure that you are collecting enough evidence for each student. The assessments should reflect your instruction and curriculum goals.

1. Create your assessment schedule by listing the months of a school year (September through June). Next to each month, allow space to include areas of literacy and the assessment practices that measure each area.
2. In the beginning of the year, you will assess areas of literacy to gather baseline information about your students' literacy knowledge, and to plan initial instruction. Identify these areas of literacy, and list the assessment practices you will use to measure them.
3. During the middle of the year, you will assess areas of literacy to track your students' progress and continue your instruction accordingly. Identify these areas of literacy, and list the assessment practices you will use to measure them. You may want to include additional assessments for your low-performing students.
4. The end of the year assessment will assess student progress over the year, and also provide documentation of performance for the next year's teacher. Identify the areas of literacy and assessment practices used to measure them.

	Some Areas of Literature and Assessment Practices and Tools Word Knowlegde Comprehension Writing Kindergarten Identifying rhyming words Oral retellings Journal entries First Grade Running Records; Knowledge of high-frequency words Oral retellings; Response to questions Journal entries Second Grade Running Records; IRI Written summaries Project reports

	Submit your completed Assessment Schedule.

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