How does this teacher manage assessment?

2/27/14

This teacher is constantly assessing her students. She assesses them pre, during, and post learning. She will ask them questions before starting the lesson for a formative assessment, then she is constantly asking them questions during the lesson, and she will perform varies summative assessments to test what they have learned. The summative assessments sometimes are independent tests in a Q and A format but often they are group projects or individual projects that are more thought provoking. For instance, the students learned about parts of a story and so for a summative assessment they were writing their own mystery stories. This was a really fun way to see their understanding of plot, characters, setting, details, etc. I have noticed that this teacher and in other elementary classes I have observed the teacher does not lecture much (elementary students need to get their wiggles out vs secondary who have a much longer attention span) but instead the teacher incorporates lots of class discussions, demonstrations and group projects to get the students to engage in learning and assess their understanding. I feel like overall the teacher is having a conversation with her students...a very educational one.