{"id":607,"date":"2026-07-13T17:10:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T09:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/teachertalk.site\/?p=607"},"modified":"2026-07-13T17:28:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T09:28:09","slug":"5-easy-steps-to-fix-the-missing-link-in-assessment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/teachertalk.site\/?p=607","title":{"rendered":"5 Easy Steps to Fix the Missing Link in Assessment"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Assessment · Planning<\/div>\n

Assessment isn’t the last decision in a lesson plan \u2014 it’s four more decisions, and they only work as a chain.<\/p>\n

⏱ 5 min read · By Matt Faulkner · Assessment \/ Pedagogy<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Ask a room of preservice teachers what comes after “learning intention” and “success criteria” in a lesson plan, and most will say “the activity.” Ask what comes after that<\/em>, and the answer gets vaguer \u2014 a formative check, added somewhere near the end, almost as an afterthought.<\/p>\n

That’s not really anyone’s fault. Backward design tells you assessment comes before activities. What it doesn’t spell out is that assessment is not one decision. It’s a chain of decisions, and each link depends on the one before it.<\/p>\n

Skip a link, and the chain still looks fine from a distance. It’s only when you go to use the evidence \u2014 for reporting, for grouping, for next week’s planning \u2014 that you notice something’s missing. This is the first of three posts unpacking that chain, starting with the two links most planning conversations skip.<\/p>\n

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The Missing Link in Backward Design<\/h3>\n

In our post on backward design<\/a>, Stage 2 \u2014 “determine acceptable evidence” \u2014 sounds like a single step. In practice, it’s five separate decisions, and they only work as a chain.<\/p>\n

Get the content descriptor right, and the learning intention should follow. Get the learning intention right, and the success criteria should follow. From there, though, teachers routinely stall. The assessment strategy gets chosen on instinct, and the record-keeping device gets chosen even later \u2014 often on the walk to the photocopier, five minutes before the lesson starts.<\/p>\n

That’s the gap this post is about. Not the first three links, which we’ve covered in detail already, but the two that come after \u2014 and the discipline of choosing them together, not separately.<\/p>\n

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🧍 The Five-Link Assessment Chain<\/div>\n