Effective teachers use various forms of classroom assessment to monitor students’ progress. Assessments are used to track learning retention, but they can also be a way for teachers to find out if students are confused, need more clarification, or feel comfortable with a topic.
Assessments do not always mean end-of-the-unit tests. Sometimes using exit cards so students can explain what they learned at the end of a lesson or asking students to show hand signals during a lesson can demonstrate students’ comprehension. Using assessment methods helps teachers refocus their instruction.
Read additional stories from our New Directions in Assessment story package.
In these videos from our editorial partners at Teaching Channel, master educators demonstrate the creative assessment techniques they use to track student learning.
This collection of short clips covers strategies for assessing learning retention at the beginning, middle, or after a lesson, including using text messages and word clouds to demonstrate overall student learning, creating pattern folders for students to critically analyze reading, and more.
Infinitely Reusable Folders for Practice & Assessment
Jennifer Saul, a 3rd grade teacher, makes folders with a plastic sleeve inside so she can give students different math worksheets every day. Students have dry erase markers at their desks. This method allows her to easily see what level students have reached and to keep assignments and grades together.
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Text What You Learned: Using Technology to Assess
High school English teacher Sarah Brown Wessling has students use their cell phones to text what they learned in class yesterday. Their sentences appear on the projector screen. Then she takes the texts and creates a word cloud, to demonstrate students’ overarching learning.
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Communicate Learning With Silent Signals
Madeline Noonan, a 5th grade teacher, has her students use silent signals to communicate if they agree or disagree with a statement, need the teacher to speak louder, or want more clarification on a topic.
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My Favorite No: Learning From Mistakes
Lisa Alcala, an 8th grade math teacher, has students complete a warm-up problem and then chooses “my favorite no,” or her favorite wrong way to solve the problem. This demonstrates correct problem-solving methods before students make mistakes on tests.
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Pattern Folders: A Literary Analysis Tool
For reading assessment, high school English teacher Sarah Brown Wessling has students create pattern folders—a manila folder with pockets and note cards. These folders offer students a map to more critically understand and analyze what they read.
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Clipboards: A Tool for Informal Assessment
Teacher Audra McPhillips shares an easy tip on how she takes notes to make her current lessons better and future lessons more targeted.
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The Stoplight Method: An End-of-Lesson Assessment
Language arts Teacher Sarah Brown Wessling demonstrates a quick-and-easy way to conduct an end-of-lesson assessment. The exercise, she says, helps her gauge student understanding and the effectiveness of her instruction.
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