Testing what you teach: The link between Instruction & Assessment

Every great teacher plans their instruction and assessment simultaneously...whether they know it or not. On a very basic level, instruction and assessment are linked because, as a teacher, its your duty to assess your students' understanding of what you have attempted (sometimes with questionable success) to imprint in their young minds. No lesson or unit can be deemed successful without the knowledge that the students have grown in their understanding and comprehension of a topic, idea or area of thought.

Reverse planning might exhibit this idea most clearly. A popular method of unit planning, it helps teachers look at what they want their students to learn in the end before breaking down the day-by-day or minute-by-minute run through. If I am craving a great steak, its a lot easier to plan a transportation route if I choose the restaurant beforehand. Hopping in a car, shifting to drive and speeding off without a destination in mind might get you a steak eventually but you can be guaranteed it will take a lot longer, the steak might not be as good and the other passengers in the car (say your students) will probably get cranky along the way.

Instruction must be planned with the end goal of a successful assessment in mind. Likewise, the assessment must be based on what the students learned in class, the standards at work and perhaps a greater goal in the works. Always keep it relevant.

My students will be assessed on the end product they hand it, as well as their thoughtfulness, understanding and contributions along the way. Call it a holistic assessment. By producing quality graphs, data analysis, reflection and conclusions they will exhibit to me that they listened, understood and applied the concepts they were taught. I'd also add that my assessment will be based as much on their ability to make conclusions, form analysis and perhaps synthesize from graphs as from their ability to form them.