A Unique Approach To Pre And Post-Assessments
by Grant Wiggins, Ph.D, Authentic Education
One of my favorite stories concerns the legendary basketball coach John Wooden. He always gave himself a research project in the off season. As recounted in the insightful and practical book You Haven’t Taught If They Haven’t Learned, one year Wooden’s UCLA Bruins had done a poor job at shooting fouls. What did Wooden do? Call up the coaches of the best foul-shooting teams as well as the best-shooting players to find out what they did in practice. He learned a vital lesson: too often, foul-shooting was not done under game conditions in every day practice.
This great resource talked about the value of pre and post assessment. That is giving a form of assessment at the beginning of the teaching time period and then giving the same assessment at the end. This was something that I have thought about very little. I think it is a great tool that can be used to really check and see if your students have learned the key targets that you wanted them to learn. I think that it can be very insightful for the teacher because it will help to show just how much students have learned over the course of the year and things they maybe didn’t learn as well. It can also be helpful for the students to see what they have learned and realized that they have accomplished something. It just requires that teachers follow through with it.