Enhancing Students' Learning

Good assessment can enhance students' math learning. Teachers should:

• Choose assessment tasks carefully because they tell students what kinds of mathematical knowledge and performance are valued.
• Use assessment techniques (such as observations, conversations and interviews with students, or interactive journals) to understand which students are likely to learn best through the process of articulating their ideas and answering the teacher's questions.
• Provide students with feedback to help them set goals and assume responsibility for their own learning.
• Use scoring guides, or rubrics, to analyze and describe students' responses to complex tasks and to determine students' levels of proficiency.
• Use classroom discussions in which students present and evaluate different approaches to solving complex problems to increase their sense of the difference between an excellent or mediocre response
• Integrate assessment so that it becomes a routine part of the ongoing classroom activity rather than an interruption.
• Selecting assessment methods based on the age, experience, and special needs of students should be considered. For example, teachers should use English-enhancing and bilingual techniques to support students who are learning English.