Assessments

Why do assessments matter in your classroom?

It is important to use formative assessments through your lessons so you can gauge whether or not your students are understanding what is being taught. By using formative assessments you can adjust your lessons while you are teaching. For instance, if you notice your students are lost you might want to change the course of instruction and review some previous skills, or if your students seem to understand and are getting bored you might want to make the lesson more challenging because it might be too simple.

Some examples of formative assessments 

• Think-pair-share
• Discussions
• Journal entries
• Hand signals
• Kahoot!

Summative assessments are how you measure the students' learning. This type of assessment happens after the learning has taken place.

Some examples of summative assessments

• Tests
• Finals
• Projects
• Papers

While we seem to be moving away from paper assessment there are still several benefits that come from using paper assessments. One benefit is that the materials are easily accessible. Some schools are not one to one on devices and getting enough devices for all students to take an assessment might be difficult. Paper assessments do not always have to be tests and quizzes created by the teacher, you could have your students make peer quizzes, create graphic organizers, or 3-2-1.

Tools to use when assessing assessments

• Anecdotal notes
• Rubrics
• Checklists
• conversations

Fun and engaging ways to implement assessments in your classroom.


Kahoot! This app gives students the opportunity to play against their peers and show their knowledge through an online quiz format. You can either use premade quizzes or you can create your own and differentiate the quizzes based on the needs of your class as a whole.

Prodigy is a tool that uses game based learning. You can create assignments based off of the standards and skills you are currently working on.

Flipgrid is an app that students can use to record their thinking about a topic. You can ask the students a question and the students record themselves explaining their opinions and reasonings. THis is a great tool to use if you have shy students or ELLs in your classroom because they can be a part of the discussion but do not have to talk in front of the whole group.