Do Your Lessons Contribute to Student Success?

Does every lesson contribute to student success on that assessment? Could some of your lessons be omitted because they don't connect directly to that assessment? Are you missing anything? For example, if your assessment requires students to write in academic language and support their ideas with evidence, you should include some lessons that give students practice with that kind of writing. So the last question is, will the assessment be weighted heavily in your grade book? It should be. If it's disguised as learning, but is doing little more than keeping students busy, it's probably time for it to go. Using a process like backward design helps us get better at making these decisions.