Standard 8
Selects appropriately from a variety of assessment strategies to evaluate student learning and uses this information to make informed curriculum decisions. 

"Lindsay checks for understanding by monitoring the pairs when playing the game," -Rose Ferrante, college supervisor commenting on my lesson, The Product Game. 

It is crucial to assess students based on a variety of strategies.  Assessing may involve just monitoring groups, checking papers, giving tests, or giving students hands-on activities to complete.  A teacher can not just assess using one single strategy.  Some students perform better doing activities.  Some students perform better on tests.  A teacher must not have the same test format when giving tests for assessments.  Some students do better on standardized testing, whereas others may perform better when given essay style examinations.  

In my lesson plans, I always incorporate various assessing strategies.  During an observation by my college supervisor, my students were playing a math game called the Product Game.  You can find the lesson plan by clicking here.  How I assessed my students was walking around the room and monitoring how they were cooperating in pairs.  I assessed them as we were playing as a class when it came to judging critical thinking skills.  I also assessed when I gave a multiplication timed test the next day to see how much they grasped the practice with the multiplication skills.  

When I figured out what areas my students were struggling with, I could then make decisions on what to teach next, or what I needed to re-teach.  As far as the Product Game went, it was clear that my students needed more practice with memorizing their multiplication facts.  I spent an extra week on this using individual and cooperative learning.