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  Let's take a look at how to design a simple standards-based pre and post assessment piece for your lesson. The quickest
  method of creating a standards focused assessment is to break your correlating instructional objectives down into simple
  multiple-choice questions. Although the term "multiple-choice questions" causes concern with most educators when used as
  an assessment device, it is important to remember that this will only serve as one element of determining student academic
  growth during this lesson. Additionally, this format lends itself to the type of high stakes standardized testing that our
  students face every year. 

  With that said, let's take a look at this process step by step using an example standard and correlating instructional
  objectives from Language Arts. You will notice that only one aspect of this standard has easily generated two questions for
  both the pre and post assessment pieces. In this manner, a fairly detailed and accurate picture of your students' skills before
  and after your lesson can develop. 

       California Language Arts Standards 
       3.0 Literary Response and Analysis 
       3.4 Analyze ways in which poets use imagery, personification, figure of speech and sound to evoke
       readers' emotions.
       Correlating Instructional
       Objectives
                              Corresponding Pre Test
                              Questions
                                                            Corresponding Post Test
                                                            Questions
       Students recognize definition
       of personification as a literary
       device.
                              1. Personification is best
                              described as: 
                              a. the use of many characters to
                              create a scene
                              b. applying human characteristics to
                              inanimate objects 
                              c. creating direct characterization
                              through the stating of a character's
                              personal opinions 
                                                            1. Applying human characteristics
                                                            to inanimate objects can best be
                                                            described as: 
                                                            a. Alliteration 
                                                            b. Onomatopoeia 
                                                            c. Personification 
                                                            d. Hyperbole 
       Students can identify the use
       of personification as a literary
       device.
                              2. Which of the following is an
                              example of personification? 
                              a. It was a biting winter wind that
                              blew down from the North. 
                              b. Time and time again, he openly
                              claimed to hate asparagus. 
                              c. The entire Spanish Armada was
                              lost that fateful day. 
                                                            2. Which of the following is an
                                                            example of personification? 
                                                            a. The law had finally reached out and
                                                            grabbed him. 
                                                            b. When it rains, it pours. 
                                                            c. We killed that other team in last
                                                            year's final. 
                                                            d. The lightning illuminated the sky, and
                                                            the thunder cracked with a WHAM! 
 
 

  Designing Your Own Standards-based Pre and Post Assessment 
  Now it is your turn. Design a simple 10-20 question pre-test as a word processed document using your instructional
  objectives as your content guide for your questions, much like the example above. Make sure that you take time to use the
  document sharing tool to upload this pretest so that your mentor can quickly review it and provide you with any feedback
  that might be necessary. 

  Next, design your post-test. In order to create your post-test, we suggest that you slightly modify the same questions that
  you used for your pre-test as in the language arts example. This will allow you to create a close comparison between your
  students' knowledge base before and after the lesson's implementation. The data from this comparison will be reported
  within the results section of your teacher lesson plan guide page towards the completion of this course. 
 
 
 
 

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