Diagnostic Assessments: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly


I’ve received some emails recently from teachers asking about Diagnostic Assessments, so I’m going to dedicate this blog to my experiences and thoughts on these, what I have tried, the issues I have had and what has worked well. I have also included links to download pre-assessments and answer keys for Whole Numbers for grades …

Early Predictors – What I Learned from Dr. Daniel Ansari’s Webinar


Early math achievement is a better predictor of success in school in general (math, reading, etc.) than early reading! I find this fascinating considering that there is WAY more funding and research of literacy than numeracy. For YEARS, I’ve been saying that numeracy is too important to always be playing second fiddle to literacy – …

Part 2: How Do I Assess This New Math Curriculum?


In the last post, we explored how formative assessment is used to guide instruction and how summative assessments can be used to assess the current curriculum, including the competencies and the big ideas.   Historically, we have only been assessing procedures and so there needs to be a new approach to assessment that is aligned …

How Do I Assess This New Math Curriculum?


This is probably the most frequent question I get about mid-way through a professional development session on teaching math conceptually. Not only are we tasked with teaching math differently, but also with assessing math differently. Did I mention we first have to actually learn the math differently? Yikes! Don’t panic. We are here to support …