The Four Basic Stages of Classroom Assessment

Assessment serves teachers a number of ways. Through assessment a teacher can track students' progress and achievement, and determine the success of their own instruction. There are four basic stages to assessment: Planning Assessment, Gathering Evidence, Interpreting Evidence and Using Results. By following these stages, a teacher can more easily set goals, track the progress toward those goals, and make any program changes necessary to reach them.

During the Planning Assessment stage, a teacher is determining what exactly it is they are going to assess. This can be anything from the grasping of basic skills by a single student to the understanding of complex equations by an entire class. The teacher is also determining the methods to be used to do the assessment. My use of this stage in the classroom is totally dependent on the material at hand.

Likely, I would find myself planning ways to measure the success of a lesson plan, and the understanding of that lesson by my students. Possible assessments I would consider using are: walking around the room and observing the work of the students, preparing worksheets, administration of tests and quizzes, and simply asking the students if they understand the material.

The next step is Gathering Evidence. During this stage, I am employing the methods that I considered during the Planning stage. To gather evidence, I would walk the room, making note of any students who appear to be having difficulty. I would review the material with the students to check for understanding. I would also give review tests and quizzes, to determine how well the material has been absorbed and applied.

Once the evidence has been gathered (in the form of notes, observations, homework, tests, etc.) the next stage is Interpreting Evidence. During this step, the teacher is looking at the data against Rubrics for the assessments. By using a Rubric, the teacher can easily see what areas are being understood and which areas need reinforcement. During this stage, I would keep a checklist for each student, covering all the concepts I would like them to learn. As I assess each student, I would check off each concept learn and make note of any area that needs review.

By looking at the data produced by this checklist, I get a pretty clear picture of which concepts are being learned and which are causing difficulty. If only a few students are having difficulty with a concept, I might infer that those students need some more review, or possibly a different way to look at the concept. If the majority of the class is having difficulty, I would probably infer that the problem lies with my lesson. In that case, I need to rethink how I am teaching this concept.

Finally, there is the Using Results stage. It is during this time that the teacher needs to take what he has inferred during the Interpreting Evidence stage and decide how he is going to use that information. During this stage I would be choosing whether I need to work with the students, myself, or both. As mentioned, if the class as a whole was showing some difficulty with a lesson, I would likely find myself reworking the lesson for the next class. In cases of individual students, I would need to decide if the problem lies with the student or the material. Obviously, if I assessment shows overall class understanding and integration of the information, I can add another notch to my resource file!