The Importance of Assessment

Today teachers, parents, and our government often misuse assessment. Assessment should be used as a tool for teachers to guide their instruction.  Catching Readers Before They Fall suggest using a number of different methods and strategies to assess students.  Teachers must use authentic, ongoing, and informative assessments to make sure that they are able to tailor the instruction for large groups, small groups, and individuals. By doing this teachers are able to tell which students are struggling in certain areas, as well as who is ready to move on to greater challenges. By observing students you are assessing them. By observing students behaviors, struggles, and strengths while working will help teachers make sure that they are creating a proper system to keep them moving forward in their learning.

Using both informal and formal tools to assess students is very important. Informal tools include observing a student as they engage in work and taking notes during individual reading time. Formal tools include running records and benchmark assessments. Running records are described as a tool for recording and then interpreting how children work on texts. These records help teachers determine which strategies are being used as well as information about what text is appropriate for a child.

Catching Readers Before They Fall goes into great detail about documenting and organizing the information that teachers collect when assessing students. It is very important that this information be organized well so that teachers can keep track of each student and see their progress through the year, not just from one assessment to the next. This also allows teachers to easily see what each student needs to work on, but can also help the teacher plan whole-group instruction for the next week as well as small group lessons. It is important that when tracking a student’s progress the information is kept private. Teachers should not post progress publicly as it can be very damaging to a child.