INTRODUCTION

Literacy assessment is an intrinsic component of authentic, successful literacy instruction. In order to create the most valuable and enriching experience for our students, teachers must work toward using assessment for so much more than simply determining a grade or identifying benchmarks.

- Assessments are key to helping teachers guide their lessons and instruction. Continual, informal, classroom assessment helps teachers to determine which concepts and skills have been mastered and which ones need reinforcement. These observations will be used to formulate teacher lesson strategies.

- Assessments are also used to monitor student progress. Strategies such as questioning, running records, and small group discussions are all authentic means of monitoring student progress.

- Assessment is also an important tool for ongoing student/teacher communication. “Tests” should not be imposed upon students. Rather, students should, whenever possible, become part of the assessment process so that they can learn to take ownership of their own learning. When a teacher identifies an opportunity for a struggling student to improve, this should become a teaching moment of interaction between the student and the teacher. Assessment is not a secret. It is an open line of communication between students and their teachers.

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