Let's get honest for a second. Can we get honest for just a second?
Ok...good..in our profession the emphasis is ALWAYS on the POST-ASSESSMENT. We take end of the year assessments, end of unit assessments..END, END, END.
But what about the Pre-Assessment? I have been reading The PLC+ book by Douglas Fisher (and many others) and there is a chapter on focused around the key question "Where are our students now?".
When I began reading this chapter, I thought, "ok yea, we have beginning of the year assessments." But as I kept reading further I thought, "WOW!"
The power and information given to us by pre-assessments is immense. It made a couple of questions came to mind:
How do I know what students already know?
How do I know that the performance on end of unit assessment isn't something they already knew?
If they were already proficient and I didn't know it, how did I push them?
How do I know what I truly taught them?
These are questions I never considered before. Post data is not the only data and it shouldn't be the most important.
The end of unit data means nothing if we don't know where they started.
Growth point for myself: Use pre-assessment data to inform instruction.
Do you rely heavily on pre-assessment data?
Yes!
Somewhat!
Not really, but I will now!
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