Step-by-step: Align instruction, practice and assessment

1. Define the competency and success criteria
   • Ask: What should students be able to do, in what context, at what quality level?
   • Write visible success criteria in student language (e.g., “Explain the main causes of X in two paragraphs and cite at least one primary source”).
2. Backward-design your assessments
   • Create an authentic assessment task that requires the competency (performance task, project, real-world problem).
   • Build rubrics aligned to your success criteria before you teach.
3. Plan instruction and practice that scaffold toward that task
   • Sequence lessons to build sub-skills, with formative checks that mirror the final task.
   • Include guided practice, collaborative problem-solving, and opportunities to apply concepts in realistic contexts.
4. Embed formative assessments regularly
   • Exit tickets, quick quizzes, one-minute reflections, live polling, whiteboard responses — all designed to reveal progress on the success criteria.
   • Use results immediately: reteach, re-scaffold, or extend.
5. Use summative assessment as verification and teacher feedback
   • After a summative test or project, examine distribution (mean and standard deviation), item difficulty, and common errors to judge whether teaching hit the mark.

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