Seven assessment strategies for Module 3 of Decoding the Code, sequenced in the order teachers meet them and aligned back through the learning activity to the objective it proves.
The teachers taking this course already pass assessments for a living. What they have not had is a check that tells them whether a structured-literacy move actually works in their own third-period classroom.
So the assessments in Module 3 are built to answer one question: can this teacher run the routine on Monday? That rules out a recall quiz as the main instrument. A teacher can name the six components of structured literacy and still freeze when a student stalls on photosynthesis. The evidence I need is performance evidence, which is why the module ends in a build rather than a test (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005).
The sequence runs formative-heavy on purpose. Five of the seven strategies are formative, and every one of them returns feedback the teacher can act on before the next task rather than a score after the fact (Black & Wiliam, 1998). The two that carry weight sit at the end, once the teacher has had four chances to be wrong cheaply.
Mastery gating over averaging. The gate at the end of the module has to be passed, not averaged into. A teacher who scores 70 percent on morpheme parsing has a 30 percent hole that shows up in front of students, so the gate reopens with coaching instead of recording a grade and moving on (Guskey, 2010).
Five objectives, carried forward unchanged from the Unit 7 alignment. Every assessment below traces to one of them.
Each card names the strategy, what it collects, and the activity and objective it is tied to. The order is the order a teacher meets them inside the module.
A twelve-item drag-and-drop sort embedded in the activity itself. Teachers separate academic words into base plus affixes, and the check requires ten of twelve correct before the module advances. Feedback on each drop names the part and what it does rather than marking the item red, so a wrong drop teaches the distinction between a root and a base instead of just costing a point.
Teachers tag at least three morphological error patterns across two annotated student writing samples and, for each one, name the instructional move it calls for. Scored against an answer key that awards credit for defensible alternate reads, because real student writing rarely has one clean diagnosis. The rationale is the part that gets scored — a correct tag with no instructional move attached is an observation, not an analysis.
Teachers submit a morpheme matrix built on one high-value root drawn from their own subject. The tool verifies the mechanical requirement — at least eight real words generated — and a short rubric scores the two things a tool cannot see: whether the morpheme boundaries are correct, and whether the words are ones students actually meet in that content area. A matrix that generates eight obscure words passes the count and fails the rubric.
A three-minute recording of the teacher running the four-step mapping routine — see it, mark it, say it, build it — on one vocabulary set. Scored with a single-point rubric that checks four things: all four steps present, explicit teacher language rather than discovery prompting, a genuine multisensory component, and pacing that fits the time a real class period allows. Recording it is the point; a teacher can describe the routine correctly and still not be able to say it out loud.
Teachers post the root they chose and defend why it earns classroom time, then respond to two peers through a three-prompt protocol: name one strength, name one place the rigor could slip, ask one question. The protocol exists because open peer feedback in teacher PD reliably collapses into agreement. Credit is earned on the responses, not the original post, and a response that only affirms does not count.
The culminating artifact of the module. Teachers design and submit a ten-minute morphology routine built for a real lesson already on their calendar, scored with an analytic rubric across four criteria: the literacy support is explicit rather than implied, a multisensory element is genuinely present, the original rigor of the content is intact, and the routine fits the ten minutes it claims. Submission is open in three formats — written plan, annotated recording, or think-aloud — matching the action and expression principle the whole course is built on (CAST, 2018).
A short criterion-referenced check — parse a set of unfamiliar academic words, then build two more from a supplied root — that must be passed at eighty percent before Module 4 unlocks. The threshold is set where it is because the gate carries three objectives rather than one: at eighty percent a teacher can miss a single item without leaving a whole objective unproven, and cannot miss two. A lower bar would let someone through with morpheme boundaries still unreliable, which is the exact gap the lesson-design work in Module 4 builds on top of. Attempts are unlimited and each failed attempt routes back to the specific content the miss came from rather than restarting the module. The gate confirms the three objectives the next module depends on, so a teacher does not carry a morphology gap into the lesson-design work that follows.
| # | Assessment strategy | Type | Learning activity | Objective | CLO | Bloom |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Word-part sort check | FORMATIVE | Interactive Word-Part Sort | 1 | 1 | Understand |
| 2 | Error-pattern tagging with rationale | FORMATIVE | Student-Work Autopsy | 2 | 2 | Analyze |
| 3 | Morpheme matrix artifact | FORMATIVE | Matrix Lab | 3 | 3 | Apply |
| 4 | Recorded routine performance check | FORMATIVE | Routine Script + Practice | 3, 4 | 3, 4 | Apply |
| 5 | Structured peer review | FORMATIVE | Discussion Forum | 3, 5 | 3, 4 | Evaluate |
| 6 | Mini-routine build performance task | SUMMATIVE | Mini-Routine Build | 5 | 4 | Create |
| 7 | Module mastery gate | SUMMATIVE | Mastery Gate | 1, 3, 4 | 1, 3 | Apply |
Unit 8 closes the alignment chain the document has been building since Unit 4.
Unit 4 named the outcomes. Unit 5 brainstormed the activities. Unit 7 revised the outcomes and wrote the module objectives underneath them. This unit supplies the missing third of that chain — the evidence. Read in order, the IDD now answers all three of the questions Understanding by Design asks in sequence: what should learners walk away able to do, what will count as proof, and what experience gets them there (Wiggins & McTighe, 2005).
The chain also runs backward, which is the more useful direction for checking my own work. Pick any assessment in the table above and walk it back: it belongs to an activity, that activity serves an objective, and that objective ladders to a course learning outcome. Nothing in Module 3 exists without a line back to a CLO. When I add Module 4, that trace is the first thing I will run — an activity with no assessment above it, or an assessment with no objective under it, is the gap I am looking for.
Anderson, L. W., & Krathwohl, D. R. (Eds.). (2001). A taxonomy for learning, teaching, and assessing: A revision of Bloom's taxonomy of educational objectives. Longman.
Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education: Principles, Policy & Practice, 5(1), 7–74.
CAST. (2018). Universal Design for Learning guidelines version 2.2. https://udlguidelines.cast.org
Dick, W., Carey, L., & Carey, J. O. (2015). The systematic design of instruction (8th ed.). Pearson.
Guskey, T. R. (2010). Lessons of mastery learning. Educational Leadership, 68(2), 52–57.
Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2005). Understanding by design (2nd ed.). Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.