Meei Fukuyama

Duke: Assessment

Duke talks about “Assessment” early in this book, chapter 3. We usually think that

assessment should come at the end of the process of learning, as an evaluation of the quality of

performance. Duke made some great points in the first few passages in this chapter. Many

teachers begin teaching without thinking or planning about how they will know that students

have learned what they think they have taught. Since assessment is directly related to goals in

learning, we as teacher should think about assessment before instruction actually begins.

Some teachers think assessment is to grade student’s performance. However, assessment

is not feedback/grading. Duke points out that assessment is “finding out”. Assessment should

be an ongoing activity and as a teacher, we should be thinking from the first moments of goal

setting and throughout the process of planning and implementing instructions.

As we move through teaching lesson, rehearsal, and class, it is important to be observant

about students. Assessment is an ongoing opportunity to learn what students know, how they

feel, and how they absorb their knowledge to their own skills. This is where importance of

precising language comes in. Educator’s information needs to be clear. Here is a Duke’s

suggestion in this chapter: Assessment be a part of everyday rehearsal and every class, that

students have opportunity to demonstrate what they know and are able to do independently every

time they meet you. Students should be able to adopt their knowledge to their own skills, and

teacher should observe what they have done at the same time. This should be frequent activity to

where it becomes a routine of the instruction. The goal of assessment is to observe students and

teach them deep understanding, intellectual, and physical fluency, instead of grading/feedback

and focused more on breadth of the material.

Question: How to make students not to think assessments are competition and grade?