Growing Success: True to its Name

Growing Success is a document that has popped up in every one of my courses because of how essential it is. It breaks down assessment into manageable sections and gives thorough explanations as to what assessment looks like today, what it looked like years ago and how it may change. Something big that I learned from this document is the idea that assessment is fluid. Not that it does not have rules or types, but rather that it has changed form so many times over the years and it will continue to do so to meet the needs of the classroom. This is especially evident in how the document approaches Special Education and the vital role meaningful assessment plays in identifying student's particular needs. Knowing your students is so incredibly important for teachers to accurately aSssess the strengths and areas of needs for their students so they can begin differentiating their instruction to meet them. I found this teachers blog online that outlines ways a teacher can get to know their students as learners which I will include here: Know Your Learners

Southard. Students.[ Online image]. Retrieved from
http://funinfirst.com/getting-to-know-your-students/

My understanding of report cards and how the grading system worked was quite minimal before reading this document simply because it had been so long since I had seen a report card. And the ones that I knew are not as the same as kind you will find today. I appreciated that Growing Success is true to its name and the amount of feedback and detail included in report cards has indeed grown.