This document discusses techniques for assessing student understanding while teaching. It emphasizes the importance of using different teaching methods, including direct instruction, coaching, and constructivist approaches. The document recommends assessing student understanding informally and continuously throughout a lesson, rather than just with formal end-of-unit assessments. Some specific formative assessment techniques presented include having students write summaries on index cards, submit questions anonymously, create concept maps, and explain analogies.

1. Assessing Along the
Way
Using Assessment to
Validate Your Curriculum

2. Good Teaching is Dependant
upon Good Curriculum
Design
 Teaching for understanding is not the
same as teaching for skill development or
teaching for recall!
 Different teaching purposes demand
different teaching designs

3. Teaching for Understanding
Requires:
 Routinely using teaching methods from all three
general types
 Didactic: Direct instruction (used to dispense factual
information)
 Coaching: Teachers providing feedback and guidance
to students as they work
 Constructivist: Allowing the student to “construct
their own learning” by solving their own problems.

4. Teaching Types
What the Teacher Uses What Students Need to Do
Didactic/Direct Instruction
• Demonstration/modeling
• Lecture
• Questions/convergent
Coaching
• Feedback/conferencing
• Guided practice
Receive, take in, respond:
• Observe, attempt, practice, refine
• Listen, watch, take notes,
question
• Answer, give responses
Refine skills, deepen
understanding:
• Listen, consider, practice, retry,
refine
• Revise, reflect, refine, recycle
through

5. Teaching Types
What the Teacher Uses What Students Need to Do
Facilitative/Constructivist/Reflective
• Concept attainment
• Cooperative learning
• Discussion
• Experimental inquiry
• Graphic representation
• Problem-based learning
• Questions (open ended)
• Reciprocal teaching
• Simulation (e.g., mock trial)
• Socratic seminar
• Writing process
Construct, examine, extend
meaning:
• Compare, induce, define, generalize
• Collaborate, support others, teach
• Listen, question, consider, explain
• Hypothesize, gather data, analyze
• Visualize, connect, map relationships
• Questions, research, conclude, support
• Pose/define problems, solve, evaluate
• Answer and explain, reflect, rethink
• Clarify, question, predict, teach
• Examine, consider, challenge, debate
• Consider, explain, challenge, justify
• Brainstorm, organize, draft, revise

6. Assessing While We Teach
 UBD requires thinking like an assessor
 Effectively assessing how the lesson is
working while we teach
Are the students beginning to
understand the big picture?

7. Constant Assessment
 Understanding is more likely if we are
doing constant assessments
 Formal and informal
 Rather than only end-of-unit
assessments
 Finished projects, final exams, etc.
 Assessments-in-progress
 Ferret out apparent from genuine
understandings

8. Correct Answers =
Understanding
 Students want teachers to believe
that they understand
 Even, when they don’t
 How else can you explain kindergarten
students raising their hand when they
don’t know the answer!

9. If I Said it Clearly…
 They must have understood it!
A common misconception
 Remember…
 Less teaching = Better learning (often)
However, we must require
understanding (How?)
We can’t just hand it to the students
(Examples?)

10. Techniques to Check for
Understanding
 Index card summaries:
 Periodically, distribute index cards and
ask students to:
1. summarize a big idea that they
understand on one side, and
2. identify something that they don’t
fully understand on the other side of
the card

11. Techniques to Check for
Understanding
 Question box:
Establish a location where students
can leave or post questions.
Students who will not speak in class
may respond in written form.

12. Techniques to Check for
Understanding
 Analogy Prompt:
Periodically, present students with
an analogy prompt.
(A designated concept, principle,
or process) is like
_______________ because
_______________________.

13. Techniques to Check for
Understanding
 Visual representation (concept map)
Ask students to create a web,
concept map, flow chart, or timeline
to show elements or components of
a topic or process.

14. Techniques to Check for
Understanding
 Verbal questioning:
Sample questions
 How is _________ similar to/different from
_______?
 What are the parts of ______________?
 How does ____________ relate to
_____________?
 What is wrong with ________________?
 What evidence supports ______________?

15. Techniques to Check for
Understanding
 Why?
 How do you know?
 Do you agree?
 Explain.
 Give your reasons.
 But what about ____?
 What do you mean by
____?
 Could you give an example?
 Tell me more.
 What data support your
position?
 Can you find a reference to
support that?
Follow-up probes

16. Techniques to Check for
Understanding
 Misconception check
Present students with common or
predictable misconceptions about a
designated concept, principle, or
process.
Ask them whether they agree or
disagree and explain why.