Understanding by Design: Chapter 5

In Chapter of Understanding by Design explains the important aspects of assessments and how they should impact your classroom. The three key principals in assessment are:

1.       Consider Photo Albums versus snapshots:  This concept makes a lot of sense.  When looking through albums of a person or a family you can look into their lives at different moments and see them as a whole individual. Although when you look at one photo of someone you can see how they are for just that one moment, you cannot tell what kind of person they are.  The same goes with teaching.  If you assess students on a regular basis you are much more likely to fully understand if that are grasping the concept.  If you just assess your student at the end, more than likely the student will be overwhelmed and your results will show that.

2.       Match the measures with the goals: There are 3 different types of goals in which we should be assessing our students:

a.       “Declarative knowledge-what students should know and understand

b.      Procedural knowledge- what students should be able to do

c.       Dispositions-what attitudes or habits of mind should students display” (pg 64)

3.       Form Follows Function:

Assessing before teaching serves such a vital purpose in creating a lesson plan that is personalized to their class and students.  Keeping your students interacting with your unit could be made easier if positive feedback was given often which gives your students encouragement and positive reinforcement which is always good for students.