Your initial discussion thread is due on Day 3 (Thursday) and you have until Day 7 (Monday) to respond to your classmates. Your grade will reflect both the quality of your initial post and the depth of your responses. Refer to the Discussion Forum Grading Rubric under the Settings icon above for guidance on how your discussion will be evaluated.

While standardized assessment provides valuable insight into a child’s academic strengths and needs, “in contrast, teacher-conducted classroom assessments allow the teacher to obtain more specific information about each student’s knowledge and skills relative to the instructional objectives of the class” (Wortham & Hardin, 2015, p. 111). As classroom assessments can be informal in nature, teachers have more choice in the strategies used. With more choice, it is important that teachers both understand their options, but also have a plan in place for how they will approach assessment in their classrooms. “By systematically observing children and using other appropriate strategies, educators create educational long-term and short-term plans centered around the interests and needs of individual children and groups, providing both scaffolding and challenges for future achievement” (p. 28). Not only is it important that you have a plan, but included in this plan should be how you will engage families in their child’s developmental progress. Remember, families provide a perspective of their child’s growth that is different from what we as educators might see. Therefore, families play an integral role in the assessment process. For this discussion, you will explore classroom assessment strategies and explain how your chosen strategies will meet the needs of Principle 4.1 of the Competent Educators of the 21st Century: Principles of Quality Pedagogy (Links to an external site.) (pages 28-31). You will also devise a plan for including families in the assessment process.