In 2009 leaders from all the states came together to launch a project. Identify high school students’ college and career readiness goals and appraise expectations for kindergarten by 8th-grade instruction. This has been known as the Common Core Objectives, which should be the target of knowledge that we instructors strive to teach. 

Although, how can you successfully and regularly measure mastery of these objectives for your specific subject areas? These five components are very important to achieving assessment that positively affects learning outcomes. 

Component 1

Formulate and communicate goals: Students get the best when goals and learning expectations are clear. As a teacher, you are expected to have a clear picture of what achievement your assessment tends to tackle and communicate to the students. 

Such facts and concepts you want your students to. 

How would you want your students to use this knowledge to get an application to solve a problem?

What real-world scenario would you expect your students to demonstrate this skill learned on?

Do you want the students to engage in a project or demonstration to show mastery?

Component 2

Select a correct assessment: If possible, students should have a preferred way of demonstrating mastery. Students can be assessed in four ways: knowledge mastery, proficiency, skill demonstration, and product creation. As a teacher, you have the right to choose the best assessment method for the subject; only within this assessment should there be choices for the students. 

For instance, if you decide that assessment in a verbal manner is the best way to check mastery, you pose a dramatic reading, a speech, or a demonstration. 

Component 3

Create experiences that call for multiple learning modes: Presentations, projects, and written papers portray mastery, but the same goes for building a model of a molecule. A presentation might be recording a podcast or a YouTube video, portraying a short book or a physical model of the concept. Whatever the assessment should be, it should align with the learning objectives communicated to the students and be simplified for them. 

Component 4

Adopt feedback and assessment to facilitate learning: Communicate with clear words at the commencement of the instruction what the proposed feedback points are for the information to be learned. These will be periods when you sit with the learner and give feedback according to the segments of the assignment. 

For instance, should the project be written, three feedback points might be on: 

• The outline
• The rough draft
• Peer critique of the pre-final paper

The goal of the planned feedback is to provide a certain direction, such as “I can see that you are intended to prove your point using multiple facts, but choose the most important three and focus on those.”

Effective usage of formative assessments, individual evaluations, and ongoing evaluations by you, the teacher, can bring about a cohesive framework of what your students are mastering.