ABSTRACT
Rigorous instruction is integral to rigorous assessment. There are three important areas of classroom instruction used during instruction that are interrelated with assessment: questioning, self-reflection, and classroom discussions. Each of these is a type of formative assessment as teacher's will be able to determine students' knowledge through their comments. By using the verbs and descriptors, teacher's can plan objectives, activities, and assessments that allow students to gain different types of knowledge using a variety of processes. Encouraging students to assess themselves is more rigorous than the teacher providing all the assessment. Socratic Questions are useful to guide students as they develop metacognition, or the concept of thinking about their own thinking. In a Socratic seminar, the role of the teacher shifts to that of a facilitator and emphasizes each student's contribution to the discussion. Before the lesson, teacher's use pre-assessments, during the lesson, formative assessments, and summative assessments at the end or after the lesson.
