Tuesday night's topic, Navigation, covered -- among other things -- chart prep. One of the things a good pilot does when preparing for a cross country is note a few checkpoints along the way, to ensure that she is on track to her destination.
THIS IS JUST LIKE FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT, that good teachers conduct throughout a unit of teaching to ensure students are on track (or if they are not, where they're at so that you can intervene. As a matter of fact, this morning I am in the midst of supporting a teacher conducting just such an assessment with a group of grade threes.
I have a handful of her students with me now -- they're reading a story about some brothers who have to share bunk beds, and then we're going to see how well they understood the story, by having them answer a few carefully selected questions. The questions will measure to what extent the students can summarize the main idea of the story, and make inferences, two skills we are working on all year. This formative assessment is like the first checkpoint along a longer cross-country. Based on the results, we (the teachers) will have to modify our teaching plan, just as a good pilot
Cool.