The link between teaching and learning is assessment: When teachers collect and analyze evidence, they can determine what students have learned and what they still need to learn. This process of checking for understanding should influence future instruction that students receive. Since understanding develops over time, teachers can use short, medium, and long cycles of assessment to increase the likelihood that students are learning (Wiliam, Fisher, & Frey, 2024).
Short-Cycle Assessments
These assessments are implemented within and between lessons, often several times during the lesson. They allow teachers to adjust the learning experiences in real time as the lesson unfolds. For example, asking students to respond to a poll or summarize their learning in writing during the lesson provides teachers with evidence of students’ current understanding. Using this information, teachers may decide to reteach a concept, meet with a small group of students, or accelerate the pace of the learning.
Medium-Cycle Assessments
Some assessments span several days or even weeks and occur at the end of major chunks of learning. These medium-cycle assessments give teachers the ability to revise future lessons based on students’ progress during or between units. For example, a quiz, practice test, or presentation provides teachers with information about students’ learning and understanding at specific points during the unit. Using this information, future lessons can be adjusted or skipped, depending on student performance. Medium-cycle assessment can be used by teacher teams to discuss teachers’ impact and generate ideas for improving students’ learning.
Teachers should regularly collect evidence from their students as they are learning and plan future instruction to accelerate learning.
Long-Cycle Assessments
These interim assessments serve as benchmarks across the academic year. Unlike short- and medium-cycle assessments, long-cycle assessments provide teachers with a longer view of what learning has occurred thus far, and how to gauge future learning such that teachers can pace instruction to meet course objectives. These can include longer projects, essays, and more formal approaches such as district benchmark tests. Long-cycle assessments provide teachers with information about their impact over longer periods of time. In addition to allowing teachers to adjust future units, the evidence from these assessments can be used to identify additional areas of intervention for students who are not yet responding to teachers’ ongoing efforts to adjust their learning experiences.
In the video that accompanies this column, high school English teacher Marnitta George observes her students as they engage in a close reading. She uses several short-cycle assessments to check for understanding and guide her interactions with students. Notice the non-verbal cues she picks up on and the questions she asks her students as they are engaged in writing. These short-cycle assessments inform her future mid-cycle assessment, which is a longer essay they are writing, and the eventual long-cycle assessment, an essay comparing several texts on the same topic.
There are several ways to check for understanding, including these three that Ms. George is using in her class (Fisher & Frey, 2014):
- Non-verbal. Watching students as they engage in learning tasks provides teachers with information that they can use to adjust the learning. Teachers who develop expert noticing skills recognize when students are not understanding or applying what they are learning. For example, a teacher may notice that students have a strong number sense and then accelerate the lesson to focus on tasks that will challenge students. Or the teacher may notice that students use extensive personal connections while discussing texts and push them to integrate evidence from the text in their responses.
- Questions. Asking questions is the most common tool that teachers use to check for understanding, but it is not always the most effective because questions might be literal or too basic. For example, closed-ended questions prompt responses that are restricted to a limited set of possibilities, so they typically provide teachers with information about students’ surface-level understanding of factual and detail-oriented information. Open-ended questions, in contrast, allow for a free-form response to understand student thinking. They are more useful for checking for understanding because they provide teachers with opportunities to clarify what students understand and to probe knowledge and application.
- Writing. When students write, they share their thinking. Sometimes, writing helps students clarify their thinking. Analyzing student writing provides teachers with information about student understanding and what they still need to learn. Essays are not the only writing students should do to demonstrate their understanding. Shorter writing pieces are also useful in checking for understanding. The key is to provide students with a prompt that allows them to share what they know. One short writing piece that is commonly used is RAFT (role, audience, format, and topic), which helps students develop perspective as they write (Santa & Havens, 1995).
Recognize Strengths Across Time
Regardless of the tools that are used to check for understanding, two points are important to consider. First, ensure that the assessment evidence that is collected builds over time. Short-cycle assessments should be logically connected with medium- and long-cycle assessments. Lack of alignment can result in missed opportunities to extend student learning. When assessment tools are nested, student understanding is monitored across time. Second, look for student strengths. When teachers choose to focus on strengths and assets, they are more likely to uphold high expectations for students, rather than focusing on deficits or gaps in learning. This positive mindset also reinforces teachers’ confidence because they recognize the impact they are having. In sum, teachers should regularly collect evidence from their students as they are learning, recognize the strengths their students demonstrate, and plan future instruction to accelerate learning.
Video Reflection: Assessment in Action
After watching the video, take the following steps to reflect on how you assess student understanding.
- Describe the current ways that you check for understanding. In which categories do they fit (non-verbal, questioning, writing, or others)? Is there a need to add additional tools?
- In the video, Ms. George first focuses on success criteria. What role do the success criteria play in her future assessment tasks?
- Identify places in the video in which Ms. George notices her students’ understanding. What actions does she take based on what she noticed?
- Identify places in the video where Ms. George asks a question of her students. What actions does she take based on student responses?
- Create an assessment grid for an upcoming unit of learning. Identity short-cycle, medium-cycle, and long-cycle assessment tools. You may use a table like this:
