I recommend that we read the second sentence of what Claire said below (in red) carefully. It is a reference to the idea put forth in some research that in education curriculum and instruction and assessment must mirror each other. It is something Claire told me last summer and I won’t ever forget it. Claire if you read this could you expand on this idea in a comment field below?
Claire:
…this [the current discussion on assessment here] is truly a discussion on curriculum. To make instruction and assessment purely focused on messages, as in pure CI, we can’t think that we are teaching kids “to remember what, when.” So that means we can’t integrate it into our curriculum… or else we feel pressure to “master” targeted structures at the expense of what is most compelling and keeps the focus on messages. There should not be a “what” in the assessments or curriculum we use. No word lists, not even HFWs, no themes, no grammar….
