Ritchie 1 Rationale for Planning, Preparation, Instruction and Assessment: Environments and Habitats PreAssessment Teaching time is limited

and therefore precious. In order to maximize the efficacy of the time the children do spend under the teachers instruction, it is important to understand what students already know so that direct instructional time is not wasted on material the students have previously mastered. In introducing a new unit of study for students on Environments and Habitats, I asked the students to take a basic pre-test on the vocabulary and general concepts involved in the unit. Looking at the scores of that pre-test helped me to understand what would be important to teach them. I realized that spending time ensuring that they grasped the vocabulary would be valuable. In addition, they needed to study what the characteristics of certain environments were. Using the knowledge I gained from the pre-test, I was able to gear my instruction and activities toward those areas of this unit that the students most needed to focus. Through teacher observation and other informal assessments I was able to gauge their progress throughout the unit. At the end of the unit, I gave the same assessment to see if the students had indeed absorbed all the information necessary to understand this area of science. That assessment and its results are available under Competency F. In the book of James, the apostle warns against taking teaching lightly, Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly (Jam. 3:1 New International Version). With that in mind, we who teach should be especially mindful that we are as effective as possible. Taking time to understand where students are and to prepare their instruction accordingly is invaluable.