Your written response to this discussion prompt assesses your ability to explain the role of assessment in monitoring student progress. This discussion also supports your achievement of Course Learning Outcome 3 and the MASE Program Learning Outcome 4.

When working as a special educator it is essential that the frequent monitoring of student progress be maintained. As you have learned in previous courses, being able to explain a student’s level of progress, areas of strength, and/or weakness are key to successful Individualized Education Program (IEP) team meetings as well as designing lesson plans, as you will discover in this activity.

Monitoring student progress does not always refer to an end of the unit test. More often, educators are accessing this information after lessons and activities to assess student learning, application, and retention of the content. This information also guides future learning. The authors of our required text, Cohen and Spenciner (2009) state, “good teaching always begins with an understanding of what the student already knows and can do,” (p. 125). Conducting frequent assessment helps teachers to adjust instruction in order to target the learning objectives and long-range (IEP) goals.

This webpage (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. offers a series of short video vignettes designed to offer easy to implement informal assessment strategies. Choose one of the following to review:

• Infinitely Reusable Folders for Practice and Assessment
• Text What You Learned: Using Technology to Assess
• Communicate Learning With Silent Signals
• My Favorite No: Learning From Mistakes
• Patterns Folders: A Literary Analysis Tool
• Clipboards: A Tool for Informal Assessment
• The Stoplight Method: An End-of Lesson Assessment

Initial Post: After reviewing the Week One Instructor Guidance, Chapter 5 of your required textbook, and one of the short videos of your choice (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site., post a substantive initial response fully addressing each of the following:

• In no more than two paragraphs, explain the role of assessment in monitoring student progress using evidence from at least two scholarly sources to support your explanation.
• Consider the Week One “Instructor Guidance” page elaboration about assessment and monitoring student progress, the assessment methods described in Chapter 5 in the course textbook, and the conversation among peers and the instructor thus far about contemporary practices for measuring and evaluating student progress in the “Post Your Introduction” discussion. In no more than two paragraphs, summarize what you know about assessment and monitoring student progress and what you would still like to learn (i.e., anything about the topic of assessment and monitoring student progress that is unclear for you at this point).
• Citing the specific video from the link provided, as well any additional source(s), including your required course textbook, list at least three strategies for monitoring student progress that you could include as part of a lesson plan for students with mild to moderate disabilities.