Instructors only really know if their strategies are effective if students demonstrate their learning. Teachers cannot assume a strategy is effective just because they teach it or the students try it. Madeline Hunter uses the analogy that teachers cannot say that they sell something unless the students actually buy something. The educators will want factual evidence of improvement rather than just a blind faith in their teaching ability. Also, the instructors will want to assess the strategy immediately after the students have used it and not wait until the end of the unit to assess the strategy. They want to know if the students continue using this successful strategy or whether they need an alternative strategy to be successful.

Therefore, the teachers will build in mini-assessments to discover if students do learn a specific skill by using a particular strategy. The instructors will give a pre-assessment on the particular skill that assesses in the same manner that the final assessment will. After the instructors demonstrate the strategy, have the class practice it, and provide any useful hints to using it, then students apply it to their current learning. After the application, the teachers can re-assess to determine if the students have learned the skill. For example, a student in English class learns the strategy of using the parts of her hand to remind her of using all the parts of a paragraph. The instructors' assessment evaluates if the the student has used the topic sentence, evidence/detail and concluding sentence in a paragraph.

If students have not obtained the skill, then the educators have to re-assess the situation. If the students had problems in implementing the strategy, then the instructors can reteach it in another manner. If students did implement the strategy in a proper manner but there was no major improvement, then they need another strategy.

If the students have demonstrated their proficiency in the learning goal, then the instructors will record this strategy in a digital format such as on Google docs or somewhere that they can access from multiple locations such as the school library, the teacher lounge, or at home. The educators will include the strategy, the learning goal(s) it worked for, the, the method of presentation, any problems the students encountered, and the change in learning such as class average of 40 on the pre-assessment to the class average of 80 on the mini-assessment. The instructors may keep this strategy listing as a chart, a spreadsheet, or a database. The teachers may realize that the students were successful such as at the 80% level, however, they may want a even higher achievement. The educators may try another strategy the next time to discern if the growth is greater. They can check against their digital record.

As teachers add to their strategy book, they come to see their students' accomplishments as a direct result of their applying a certain strategy. They see that the amount of student growth is dependent on their use of effective strategies. They implement their action research to continually improve in their teaching skills and to add to their virtual book of successful strategies.

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