Assessment Prompts Assist Supervisors

Bill Blynt
Apr 06, 2009

Monitoring instruction is an essential practice found in exemplary schools. Supervisors responsible for this activity must develop an efficient system to accomplish this important task. Conducting classroom walkthroughs enables supervisors to observe teachers and students during the instructional process. Although observing the process provides supervisors with information about instruction, how do they know if students are learning or if the instruction is targeted to required curriculum goals? During the formal observation process, often a pre-conference is conducted that provides the supervisor with the goals and strategies of the lesson to be observed. The supervisor stays for an extended period of time to determine if the goals discussed in the pre-conference have been accomplished. The lesson is later discussed in a post-conference environment and conclusions about the effectiveness of the instruction are established. The informal classroom walkthrough provides a different set of parameters. How can a supervisor determine if students are learning and if the instruction is aligned to the specific course objectives?

Lesson essential questions and the corresponding assessment prompts can provide the supervisor with a quick understanding of the lesson goals. As the supervisor walks through the classroom, the posted essential question will provide the overall lesson objective. The assessment prompts will establish what the student will be learning as the lesson unfolds. Effective use of the assessment prompts requires the teacher to distribute the prompts throughout the lesson. These assessment prompts are used to frame opportunities for the teacher to allow the student to summarize the knowledge or practice the skill embedded in the lesson. Each prompt provides an opportunity for the teacher to utilize one of the teaching strategies with the students, actively engaging students in a thinking or practice strategy, and serves as a formative assessment regarding student progress. The teacher can monitor student responses to the prompts to determine if students have mastered the content or if alternative instruction must be provided before moving on in the lesson. Because assessment prompts are distributed throughout the lesson, the supervisor can stay in the classroom until a prompt is used. Observing this component of the lesson helps the supervisor to determine if students are learning or, if not, what alternative strategies were employed by the teacher to assist students to develop the required level of understanding.

Assessment prompts should be distributed throughout the lesson. Employment of the assessment prompts should occur as each 'chunk' of learning concludes or they should be coordinated with students' length of attention span. As a result, supervisors conducting classroom walk-throughs should observe a minimum of one prompt and corresponding student engagement each 8-12 minutes. A quick review of the teacher's lesson plan will provide the supervisor with both the lesson essential question and the assessment prompts aligned to the learning goal. Supervisors reviewing this information prior to or during the walk-through will provide them with a quick but clear snapshot of the instructional goals and the identified essential content. It also provides an opportunity for the supervisor to observe students actively engaged as they address the assessment prompts utilizing the activity selected by the teache r.

Refer to Connecting Exemplary Practices in Acquisition Lessons for more information on assessment prompts.