High-Leverage Practice 6: Assessment

I am going to discuss High-Leverage Practices as mentioned on the CEC website organized around four aspects of practice. I hope you will join in the conversation!

“HLP6 - Use student assessment data, analyze instructional practices, and make necessary adjustments that improve student outcomes.”

It is important to regularly assess students’ progress, so you know what accommodations or modifications need to be made.

These assessments do not have to be formal assessments and may also be observations, inventories, oral or written.

If we don’t regularly assess our students, they may become frustrated at working at a level that is too hard for them and stop working. It is better to find out that they are having difficulties and then either move to a level where they are successful and slowly introduce more difficult tasks rather than give them too many difficult tasks all at once.

By assessing the students often, you may be able to step in and use instructional strategies that can help them be more successful.

Depending on the age of the student, you can even share your assessment data with the student and brainstorm ways that can help the student improve. Sometimes students would love to give input on their own instruction but are never asked. I find the insight from the student can be extremely helpful. This also teaches the student to be a self-advocate and to tell others what they need. Just because a student struggles does not mean that the student is stupid. Many of their peers and even some adults tend to equate struggling with stupidity and do the student a major injustice!

When making adjustments, you might have to try several different strategies until you find one that works. That is why frequent assessment and communication with the student is so important.

How do you decide on what adjustments need to be made? Please share.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash