Helping Teachers Assess Student Learning: Introduction

Assessing student learning is a core task of teaching and it is therefore vital for mentors to help teachers develop their knowledge and skill in this area. This series of study groups begins by introducing a framework for assessing understanding and gradually introduces tools and strategies for helping new teachers to assess and develop their own teaching practices in the area of assessing student learning.  A summary of each session follows:

• Study Group 1: Mentors examine their own assessment practices and are introduced to the Understanding By Design framework for assessing understanding.
   
• Study Group 2: Mentors are introduced to another tool for assessing teaching practices and begin to develop a list of goals for teacher learning in the area of assessing student learning.
   
• Study Group 3: Mentors analyze assessments that their mentees use with students and plan conversations with mentees about those assessments.  They also begin to plan a longer series of sessions that would help a novice teacher learn a chosen assessment practice.
   
• Study Group 4: Mentors refine their plans for working with a mentee around a chosen assessment practice and spend time closely examining student work.