Good Teaching Follows a Cycle Created by Dawn Cardenas, The Reading Whisperer™

Good Teaching Cycle Assessment EvaluationPlanningTeachingLearning

ASSESSMENT STAGE Educators must know that new knowledge must connect and build upon what is already known. It is the teacher’s job to determine what prior knowledge and perceptions students have about reading and writing. Assessment is the perfect start to uncovering what students already know. Assessment must be authentic, systematic and ongoing. Authentic assessment encompasses a wide range of activities in a variety of settings that all breathe the same message. Authentic assessment should be thought of as what a student CAN do. Authentic assessment focuses on essential skills and reading and writing for genuine purposes.

EVALUATION STAGE Educators must know that information taken from assessments should give clear and specific direction for instructional decision making and planning. Evaluation includes interpreting valid tests and patterns of behavior to determine what needs to be further assessed. Interpreting the data collected is the hard part. The value of the data collected is only a good as the person who deciphers it.

PLANNING STAGE Educators must know this is where lessons plans are developed to address the needs found in the evaluation stage. Curriculum decisions reflect what has already been learned and give directions for what still needs to be learned. Think of it as identifying a target and aiming for the bull’s eye. Objectives: What do I need to teach? Goals: Why do I need to teach that? Instructional Activities: How I am going to accomplish that? Methods and Materials: What do I need to accomplish this? Context: Will I use whole, small group, or individualized instruction? Assessment: How will I know I accomplished that?

TEACHING STAGE Educators must work the plan that was developed in the Planning Stage by creating activities that activates prior knowledge, makes connections to the real world, creates a motivation for students to learn and most importantly, leading the student from the unknown to the known.

LEARNING STAGE Educators must be constantly and acutely aware that the student is actually thinking, feeling or acting in a way that was not possible before the teaching took place. If learning is the act or process of acquiring any new skill/strategy or knowledge, then the test that what was established in the Evaluation Stage is validated or the teaching has to be reshaped. Educators shape and reshape their lessons by answering the question, “How do I know that I have accomplished what I set out to do?” A comprehensive system is set up that directs future instruction and gives clear evidence of growth.