3 Ways to Make Sure Your Students Are Ready for Assessments

We know what you're thinking. How am I going to make sure my students are ready to succeed on their End of Year assessments?

We all want our students to succeed, and we work hard all year to give them the understanding and tools they need to do so. At Carnegie Learning, we believe that if you teach students the right way all year round, they'll be ready for assessments. No need to cram or stress!

Our instructional approach, built from both cognitive science research and decades of classroom experience, is about giving students the opportunity to learn by doing.

Engage is about activating student thinking by tapping into their prior knowledge and real-world experiences. Our students don't come to us as blank slates, so if we can take their intuitive sense of the world and connect it to what they're going to learn today, we're going to engage them. This is the stage where students can make connections between their existing knowledge and the new concepts they're going to learn.

Develop is the time students spend building deep mathematical understanding through collaboration and questioning. They debate things together and ask each other questions, all around a mathematical topic. It's the time where the teacher is doing a lot of facilitating -- stepping back and allowing students time to productively struggle affords them the opportunity to make those connections themselves. It also helps students build their collaboration skills, one of the key 21st century skills they'll need in the future workforce.

Demonstrate is about giving students opportunities to bring it all together and show what they know (and sometimes, what they don't know). They reflect on and evaluate what was learned.

How do you incorporate this approach in your classroom? If you're looking to start, here are a few tips that can help. Let us know your tips, questions, and comments below!