Assessment Prompts(Making sure they are structured)

Carol Brewer
Jun 16, 2008

Assessment Prompts are questions that are asked throughout the lessons. These questions should be well planned and should have a purpose. This questioning purpose might be to satisfy a State Standard, modeling, assessment, thinking question, comprehension strategy or prepare students for their State Tests, etc. When teachers ask questions that are not well planned, they seem to be at a low level, or do not meet the thinking level of their students. Teachers need to think about the questions they are asking and adjust accordingly. These questions need to follow what is being taught. The following structure seems to work well for teachers when planning their Reading Comprehension Strategies questions.

Question #1 & # 2:  The question is based on the comprehension strategy.

Question #3:  The question is based on the Author's Purpose or Genre.

Question #4:  The question is a review question from a comprehension strategy that has already been taught.

Question #5:  The question is a higher level inference or connection question.

(Refer to the Learning-Focused Literacy resources or the Connecting Learning to Assessments Book and Flipchart book for further questioning support)