Assessment and differentiation in educational practice

Lesson Plan Assessment

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This 10th grade Social Studies lesson aligns to the essential knowledge, understanding and skills of the targeted learning outcomes because the Lesson Development and Expansion phase both work towards meeting the Citizenship standards and objectives, the Economic standards and objectives, and the History standards and objectives. Each Lesson Development question is specifically targeted to one or more of the standards and objectives, as are the Expansion Phase concepts. For example, the question "How is the situation for employees in 1867 different than today?" meets the Civic Life Citizenship standard; Objectives SS.O.10.01.03, SS.O.10.01.04, SS.O.10.01.05, and SS.O.10.01.08; Economics standard SS.S.10.03, specifically Institutions, Economic Systems, Factors of Production, and Competition; and SS.S.10.05, as well as SS.O.10.05.24. By multiplying the effect of each carefully asked question, the teacher can meet several objectives at once, which improves instruction without repetitious assessment.

These are the right kinds of assessment to measure what needs to be measured because it includes a wide variety of assessments: formal and informal, oral and written, independent and guided, group work and individual work. This improves instruction because different domains of knowledge are used: the homework is an independent individual's illustration, the group work is written and collaborative, and the exploratory introduction is a guided group discussion. For example, the Socratic Method is used in the Exploratory Introduction. That's a good way to do an informal assessment of the class's background knowledge about the topic while introducing them to a central concept, especially with primary sources (Angelo & Cross, 1993). So, each of these assessments are appropriate for topic at hand.

This lesson's assessments are a fair sample of the content to be assessed because the assessment helps drive the class forward. This also improves instruction, because each assessment is integral to the lesson -- no valuable classroom time is wasted. Therefore, the assessments cover the introduction, development, and expansion phases of the lesson. For instance, the worksheet is completed in small groups, one question at a time. Each group is only responsible for one part of the topic, which allows them to delve as deeply as possible in the time allowed into the information. By sharing the results with the class, the students benefit from each others' work, even if they're only assessed on a portion of the whole. An informal assessment in the form of a group discussion is appropriate to share each group's information with the class given the time constraints and an emphasis on material learned vs. ability to write legibly and quickly. Therefore, this lesson's assessments are fair samples of the content.

By focusing interaction with the teacher on the "big picture" questions, the lesson plan emphasizes those questions, which are key to meeting the content standards. Since the content standards are the underlying rationale for the lessons, the teacher-student interaction emphasizes what matters most in the topic of study. For example, by having the teacher first give a short lecture on child labor and the efficiency movement, the students are primed to answer the question about how they would feel if they lived 125 years ago. This focuses their attention on the part of the lesson that most explicitly meets the content standards, which are what matters most.