Chapter 3: Principles of Successful Assessment in the Differentiated Classroom

This chapter discusses the way that assessment plays a role in a differentiated classroom. In an effort to see students’ progress in the classroom, the teacher must assess from the beginning of the course until the end, and not merely assess when the student has reached a level where they have limited ability to improve. An interesting approach to insuring student growth is to provide them with a copy of the test at the beginning of the semester so that they may pay close attention to the key points of the semester. While it is necessary that students pay attention at all times, this will give them incentive to undertake a deep understanding of the material. It is a good point that since no end result in the future is hidden, no end result while in school should be hidden. Instead, students should have a clear understanding of the objective they are aiming for. An effective teacher will break apart whether a question is essential to a student’s learning, highly desirable thus interesting, or merely desirable. The focus will then remain upon the essential questions before later centering around highly desirable and, in the future, desirable questions. The process of determining essential questions takes time and collaboration, thus the teacher should not wait to begin the process but allow time to question faculty members and predict the end result. Even after choosing essential questions, it is necessary for the teacher to observe student progress and determine whether the questions need to be reevaluated. Pre-assessments should be done before the unit is designed so that the teacher may design the unit around student experience and need. I enjoyed that the chapter walked the teacher through deciding the relevance of pre-assessments, asking the teacher to first complete the assignments and determine the usefulness of the assessment. The teacher is to insure that they do in fact use the results of the assessment effectively, incorporating the student need into the curriculum.