- Teacher-made assessment strategies
questions can help the teacher foster student learning more effectively (e.g. suggesting Ethan goes back to his locker
to get his materials before the bell rings or avoiding assigning Hannah and Naomi to the same group).
During instruction, teachers observe students’ behavior to gain information about students’ level of interest and
understanding of the material or activity. Observation includes looking at non-verbal behaviors as well as listening
to what the students are saying. For example, a teacher may observe that a number of students are looking out of
the window rather than watching the science demonstration, or a teacher may hear students making comments in
their group indicating they do not understand what they are supposed to be doing. Observations also help teachers
decide which student to call on next, whether to speed up or slow down the pace of the lesson, when more examples
are needed, whether to begin or end an activity, how well students are performing a physical activity, and if there
are potential behavior problems (Airasian, 2005). Many teachers find that moving around the classroom helps
them observe more effectively because they can see more students from a variety of perspectives. However, the fast
pace and complexity of most classrooms makes it difficult for teachers to gain as much information as they want.
Questioning
Teachers ask questions for many instructional reasons including keeping students’ attention on the lesson,
highlighting important points and ideas, promoting critical thinking, allowing students’ to learn from each others
answers, and providing information about students’ learning. Devising good appropriate questions and using
students’ responses to make effective instantaneous instructional decisions is very difficult. Some strategies to
improve questioning include planning and writing down the instructional questions that will be asked, allowing
sufficient wait time for students to respond, listening carefully to what students say rather than listening for what is
expected, varying the types of questions asked, making sure some of the questions are higher level, and asking
follow-up questions.
While the informal assessment based on spontaneous observation and questioning is essential for teaching there
are inherent problems with the validity, reliability and bias in this information (Airasian, 2005; Stiggins 2005). We
summarize these issues and some ways to reduce the problems in Table 35.
Table 36: Validity and reliability of observation and questioning
Problem Strategies to alleviate problem
Teachers lack of objectivity
about overall class
involvement and
understandingTry to make sure you are not only seeing what you want to see. Teachers
typically want to feel good about their instruction so it is easy to look for positive
student interactions. Occasionally, teachers want to see negative student
reactions to confirm their beliefs about an individual student or class.
Tendency to focus on
process rather than learningRemember to concentrate on student learning not just involvement. Most of
teachers’ observations focus on process—student attention, facial expressions
posture—rather than pupil learning. Students can be active and engaged but not
developing new skills.
Limited information and
selective samplingMake sure you observe a variety of students—not just those who are typically
very good or very bad.