For the teachers in this course, daily, informal observation and monitoring provide information about their students' strengths, weaknesses, needs, and progress. These assessments allow teachers to adjust lessons and provide additional practice as needed.

To make informal assessments of your students' progress an easy and regular part of your classroom routine, you might want to do the following:

• Prepare Observation Logs (see below).
• Before beginning an activity or lesson, decide which students you want to observe.
• Decide which aspects of the students' learning you want to observe.
• Keep the logs nearby, and record notes as appropriate or make notes on self-sticking notepads and record the information later on the chart.
• Over several days, observe each student in the class. It is not necessary to collect information about every student every day.

Click here to view the Observation Log: Reading.

Open Court Reading and SRA Imagine It! also include formal assessments that you may use to determine your students' progress. Formal assessments can be found in the following Kindergarten components:

• Open Court Reading © 2002, Units 1-8 Assessment
• Open Court Reading © 2002, Program Assessment
• SRA Imagine It!, Lesson Assessment Book
• SRA Imagine It!, Benchmark Assessment
• SRA Imagine It!, eAssess