Assessment to Instruction (7 Steps)

We have all heard it, over and over again, "Make sure your assessments inform and guide your instruction." It sounds good, after all, if we are going to put in all of the time to individually assess our students, don't we want to use the information to help us know what our students need the most? 

In the past we would administer all of our individual assessments, and then do the cram and slam method - open our file cabinet, cram the finished assessments into the draw and then slam the drawer shut and get back to our teaching.  In other words, we gave the assessments, yet never really knew how to use the results of the assessments to guide our instruction with our students. Instead we opted to teach curriculum rather than our students.

Enter our systematic approach to assessing each student. Using these 7 steps when assessing each of our students ensures that we gather the goals and strategies each of our students needs to become a better reader.  We use this information to inform our whole group, small group, and one-on-one instruction.

1. Assess individual student.
2. Discuss findings with student.
3. Set goal and identify strategies with student.
4. Student declares goal on menu and in notebook.
5. Teacher fills out individual conferring sheet.
6. Teacher fills out strategy group forms.
7. Ready for instruction.