Clearly the idea of assessment is not new to any teacher. Most, if not all, of the traditional methods of assessment that you already use will play a part in this element of the Teaching for Understanding framework. Ongoing Assessment includes all of the tools and methods that help you and your students know if they are making progress as the unit proceeds.

The key features of Ongoing Assessment that make it different from traditional ideas about assessment are listed below. Compare these ideas to your current thoughts about assessing students.

• Tie assessments to your central Understanding Goals for students. Be sure that you assessments emphasize what you have stated as the most important concepts in the unit.
• Set clear criteria for what students do in each performance so they will know what constitutes successful work. Be sure these criteria are known by all students (rubrics are very helpful for this).
• Use assessments as teaching tools. Students should actually learn more about the ideas they are studying from their assessments.
• Give students feedback frequently for most performances telling them how to improve next time. Use peer, self and teacher feedback. Use this information to also inform your teaching.

Traditional end-of-chapter quizzes and tests play an important role in assessment, but as you know, there are many other ways to give students and teachers more frequent feedback along the way. In addition to quizzes and tests, you probably use many informal methods to judge how your students are doing throughout the course of a unit. Teachers use class discussions, journal entries, peer assessment, self-assessments and countless other methods to informally gauge how students are doing. All of these types of assessment can be useful in teaching for understanding, as long as they fit into the criteria above.

For more details on Ongoing Assessment, be sure to read other sections of the help section.