In it’s purest and simplest definition, academic performance monitoring encompasses any strategy a teacher uses to assess their students’ current level of understanding. Monitoring strategies can be used before, during, and after a lesson not only to provide feedback to the teacher but also to bring students to a higher level of concept mastery. Assessments are one strategy that are most commonly used at the end of a chapter or unit. However they can also be used at the before a unit to see if students have any prior knowledge about a topic. It is crucial that a teacher knows that objective ability that they are testing for, it could even be helpful to write a test based on the curriculum before planning the unit that way the learning objective for each lesson will correspond with concepts they will need to know for the test. This is not to say that you should teach directly to the questions test but to an ability or concept that both the lessons and the test address. For example, if a Biology teacher were to teach a unit on how predator-prey interactions create healthier populations of both predator and prey the example given in class could be of elk and wolves, whereas the question on the test may go like this, “From your understanding of predator-prey interactions explain why hunting is beneficial for both deer and human populations.” Assessments written in this manner will give you better evidence of concept attainment. Another monitoring strategy is often the most practical is probing for feedback during cooperative learning activities. Following direct instruction a teacher can walk through the room while the students are working on the activity that is related to the direct instruction. They should then ask students questions about how they are arriving at the answers that they are putting on the page. This is more useful than simply grading because it