Chapter 3: Principles of Successful Assessment in the differentiated Classroom

The point this chapter made was that the word assessment means to sit beside, or in other words to coach. We as teachers have a goal in mind, the standards, and assessing students is a way for us to know where they are. This book also talks about assessing students at the beginning, middle, and end of a unit. This impacts me as a teacher because if I assess my students, notice that there is a problem, and then do not doing anything about it, it would have been better to not have wasted the time assessing them. The point of assessing students is to help the teacher modify the lesson to meet the students’ needs. I should also break down the standards to decide what is essential, what is highly desirable, and what is desirable. Having priorities of what to teach keeps the teacher focused on the goals and less time is wasted on arbitrary lessons. A good assessment will accurately show what the students’ know and are able to do. This helps my students because if I give them feedback that they can understand and the feed back comes before the next assessment, the students have time to fix their mistakes and perform better on the next assessment. The students will also be helped by the fact that they always know what the goal is and there are no surprises.