Week 3: Diagnostic Teaching and Multi-Dimensional Assessment

This week revolved around using assessment and instruction to influence one another effectively in the classroom. Best practice implements a cyclical process of planning for instruction, using instruction to plan assessment, and reflecting on instruction and assessment to plan better instruction. In order to assess students with disabilities in particular, teachers need to understand that a certain assessment only tests a set of skills a student has within the particular testing context. In another context, a teacher might see drastically different results assessing the same set of skills.

In the Assessment/Instruction Process, the goal of teachers is to evaluate the match between the context and the learner to facilitate meaningful instruction. When a match between the learner and the context is created, students become strategic, motivated, and reflective in their learning. One huge component of beginning instruction and assessment is to motivate students. When working to motivate low-achieving or struggling students, teachers typically start with a system of extrinsic motivation, but as students become independent, intrinsic motivation will build. Praise for positive behaviors, both socially and academically, encourages students to want to act and learn independently. One of the main points discussed was to use rewarding motivations, possibly to earn fun activities or responsibilities within the classroom. One teacher I worked with over this past summer used Brain Breaks as a fun activity with a class of upcoming kindergarteners, who enjoyed earning activities like bunny-hopping around the room. 

While using the Assessment/Instruction Process, the first step is to find the learner/context mismatch in the classroom (if any), and the next step would be identifying barriers within different contexts. Through removing barriers and determining the best contexts for learning with individual learners, performance then can be established and improved.