Assessment is an integral part of teaching and learning. Purposeful assessment practices help teachers and students understand where they have been, where they are, and where they might go next. No one assessment can provide sufficient information to plan teaching and learning. Using different types of assessments as part of instruction results in useful information about student understanding and progress. Educators should use this information to guide their own practice and in partnership with students and their families to reflect on learning and set future goals.

Scenario 1:

Joe is a single father with three children.The oldest, Sadie, is in second grade.  The younger two kids go to a childcare center near Joe’s home.  Initially, Joe approached me (his daughter’s second grade teacher) because he needed help in finding childcare that matched his work schedule.  Joe worked a swing shift, so every-other-week, he needed child care from 3 p.m. until 11 p.m.  He had been using friends and acquaintances to cover this time frame, but the inconsistency was causing his daughter Sadie in my class to fall behind in her reading skills.  Besides, sometimes Joe used people that he barely knew - a situation that he worried about.  In addition, Joe was barely surviving financially and could only afford rent in a crumbling apartment house with no children’s play area.  The factory where he worked was threatening to close, and Joe knew he lacked skills to land a good job elsewhere.  He often was frustrated with his life and took it out on his children, yelling at them over minor infractions and feeling hopeless and isolated.  All of these problems placed Sadie and her siblings at risk. Her reading skills seemed to continue to fall, and her confidence in all of her language arts skills seemed to be decreasing. She did not turn in her homework, and she did not participate in class. She was unable to read at a second grade level. What assessment’s could be implemented to determine what specific skills she needed to improve on in terms of increasing her reading/language arts skills?

Scenario 2:

Danielle is a first grade student (7yrs.) who is struggling in her reading and written language classes. She is currently receiving special services for speech/language and has received these services since early Kindergarten. She attended Head Start prior to entering Kindergarten.

Danielle lives with her father, mother, older brother Brian, and younger sister, Ellen. Danielle likes school and thinks her teacher is a “great teacher.” Her favorite subject is math and her least favorite subject is reading.

According to her teacher, Danielle “uses her time wisely, works very hard in class, listens to instruction, and gets along well with her peers and adults.” Her teacher also notes that “weaknesses include understanding the content of what is being taught, remembering sight words, recalling and blending sounds to form words, reading fluency, and low test/quiz performance in her reading class.” Danielle has a 73% average in her reading.

Danielle has always struggled in reading. Her mother reported that she had difficulty learning the alphabet and rhyming words in preschool.At the first Kindergarten benchmark, she scored in the high risk category on Letter Naming Fluency (LNF) but did manage to achieve the end-of-the year goal by the May benchmark.