Ohio Department of Education

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OAT Toolkit for Social Studies
Aligning Assessments
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Assessment

• Purpose

• To inform our teaching
• To provide information to help revise instruction
• Types of assessment
• Pre-Assessment
• Formative assessment
• Post-Assessment

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If we are not going to try to improve what we
do, there is little sense in assessing
it. William Glasser
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Pre-Assessment

• Provides a chance to gather data on a students
  prior knowledge, skills and experiences.
• This data can then be used to adjust instruction
  to meet the students needs in achieving the
  standards, benchmarks and indicators.

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Formative Assessment

• Serves as a checkpoint during the learning
  process.
• Provides a teacher with information on student
  learning that can be used to adjust instruction
  as necessary.

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Post-Assessment

• Provides a teacher with information on what
  learning actually occurred.
• Did the student meet the goals you expected?
• Is re-teaching necessary?
• Are we ready to move on to the next step?

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Assessment

• How do you assess your students?
• Pre-Assessment
• Formative assessment
• Post-Assessment

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Aligning Assessments

• When creating classroom assessments, we need to
  be careful that they align with both the
  knowledge and skill(s) in the grade-level
  indicator and the benchmark.
• Activity
• Carefully review the benchmark and grade-level
  indicator on your handout.
• How does the grade-level indicator support
  understanding of the concept in the benchmark?
• Does the grade-level indicator support
  understanding of the complete benchmark or just a
  portion of it?
• How does this grade-level indicator relate
  content to and skills students learned in the
  previous grade? How does it relate to the
  subsequent grade?
• Read the suggested assessments and discuss the
  questions that follow each.
• For assessments not aligned with the grade-level
  indicator or benchmark, discuss possible
  modifications that would lead to alignment.

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Aligning Assessments

• Discussion Questions
• Why is it important for assessments to align to
  both the grade-level indicators and the
  benchmarks?
• How can we use classroom assessment to inform
  instructional planning?