4.4 Unit 4 Summary
In this unit, you examined some assessment practices for elementary history/social studies instruction. Review the summary of key concepts from the unit below:
- In goal-oriented assessment, teachers use a variety of formal and informal assessment methods to monitor students’ progress toward learning goals. (Brophy, Alleman, and Halvorsen, 2013)
- Teacher understanding of the purpose and outcomes of instruction helps guide the selection of both formative and summative assessment measures and how to use the data from those measures.
- Writing is an important assessment tool even in early elementary grades. Sentence frames or starters can help scaffold student skill development.
- Use student work as evidence to refine instructional practices.
- The SBAC rubrics for informative/explanatory and opinion writing can be used as learning targets, to assess student writing, and to assist in aligning instruction to the assessment.
- Carefully designed student peer-review protocols can serve as effective formative assessment tools to improve student writing.
- Assessment should be an ongoing and integral part of each history/social studies instructional unit, not an add-on.