Assessment
by Judith Gold

Functions of Assessment

Within the context of a social studies curriculum, assessment serves two important functions

• Assessment guides the teacher’s decision-making process about the development and sequencing of the curriculum.
• The teacher uses ongoing assessment to monitor children’s growth and progress over time and shares this information with children and their families.

Many teachers express the concern that having an integrated social studies curriculum takes away from time to teach specific skills. Teachers do not decrease their emphasis on the acquisition of skills. Instead, they discover that the social studies curriculum provides a context for children to acquire basic skills and to make authentic use of their developing skills.

Assessment to Guide Decision Making

Teachers begin a study by asking children what they already know, what questions they have about the subject. These discussions give teachers important information that helps to determine the planning and timing of the learning experiences.

Developing their own studies opens up a multitude of learning experiences for teachers. By offering these experiences, teachers allow children to demonstrate what they know and what they can do. This array of active learning experiences gives teachers data about children’s knowledge, skills, understandings, and misunderstandings. The data makes it possible for the teachers to revise and rethink their plans continually, based on what children are actually doing. Assessment is thus a daily occurrence, interwoven with curriculum and instruction, and not something that happens after the fact.

Assessment to Monitor Growth and Learning

Curriculum-embedded assessment is a continual process of observing, documenting, listening, and studying children’s work. Having such a variety of work gives teachers many insights into how, over time, children are coming to understand concepts and developing the skills to communicate these understandings.

Student Reflection

Helping students to become conscious and analytic about their own learning process is an important part of assessment. Knowing how to evaluate and reflect on process and products helps children to gain insights about themselves as learners, to see what they have accomplished over time, and to set standards and goals for themselves.

About the Author

Judith Gold, M.S., M.Ed, has worked extensively with teachers to develop integrated social studies curriculum. She is currently the Project Director of LEARNS at Bank Street College of Education. LEARNS provides training and technical assistance to all Corporation for National Service projects focused on literacy, tutoring and mentoring. Previously, Gold taught in the Bank Street School for Children and Graduate School. She has worked as an educational consultant in New York public schools and in countries including Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Bulgaria, and Nepal.