FIAE Chapter 3: Principles of Successful Assessment in the Differentiated Classroom

This chapter was about the principles of successful assessment in a differentiated classroom. Remember, it is not how a student learns that is important, but what they learn that is important. Assessment should be a coaching, nurturing tool, not one to point out a student’s shortcomings. An assessment should measure what the student has understood and the progress they have made. There are three kinds of assessments: pre-assessments, formative assessments, and summative assessments. Pre-assessment checks a student’s prior knowledge of the subject. Formative assessments are a check-up to see how the learning is going. Summative assessments sum up the unit and gauge the students’ knowledge after all the teaching has taken place. The chapter says to “Begin with the end in mind”. Give the students the end-of-unit test at the beginning of the unit so they will know what to learn and be aware of. The chapter says that, “great assessments in a differentiated classroom focus on essential and enduring knowledge, concepts, and skills”. To make these assessments, a teacher must use essential questions like in the Backward Design Model and form them that way. EEK is focused on in this chapter. EEK (Essential and Enduring Knowledge) is also known as KUD (Know, Understand, able to Do). These acronyms focus on an understanding the content being taught in the classroom. These acronyms also are a reference when constructing the essential understandings in a unit. To help a teacher teach a unit for the first time, some ways to find out what is essential are: curriculum guides, tests from other teachers, colleagues, and textbook tests. The best way to find out if the students are ready for the end-of-unit test is by pre-assessment, usually by giving them a project to seek their understanding of the subject. Assessing students before the final test is important because the students will receive feedback on how they are doing and will therefore do better on the unit test as they understood what they needed to work on. As good as this is, if the teacher does not take action upon what they see and change the lesson plans accordingly, these assessments are useless. During the teaching of the lesson, the teacher is also warned to be aware of “fluff” assignments and to try not to use these in the classroom. These kinds of assignments do not further the students’ learning at all.


This class had mixed reactions on this chapter and it was interesting to see the different viewpoints. Overall, this chapter seems to be well-liked. Everyone had at least one good comment to give to the chapter. Marie for one, felt this chapter made everything easier, “It is like doing a puzzle and putting together the edge of the puzzle first, the essential questions and assignments, to use as a guide for the rest of the puzzle, the lesson plans”. Pre-assessment was the focus of many classmates. Almost everybody was FOR pre-assessment, finding it to be very useful. However, Joel was AGAINST pre-assessment. While the class liked the chapter, many found it to be a lot of review. Clearly, they are right in believing that as the same things were in DI/UbD. One caveat of pre-assessment that should be known was brought up by Megan, “Make sure the students understand the material and aren’t just memorizing it”. This is very true to be aware of.