Assessment Practices

Hi there! Chantelle here from Miss Jacobs Little Learners Blog! Today I'm dedicating this post to exploring various assessment practices in the classroom.

Please note that there are LOTS of ways to conduct your assessment in the classroom but as you know, we are all different, and things that work for one teacher, may not necessarily work for another. It is good however, to try a few things and see what works for you.

Call me 'Old Skool' but hard copy checklists are definitely my preferred assessment method in the classroom. I like to create a little Assessment Book or Folder to house all my checklists and anecdotal notes. I like how this allows for all my assessment to be in one place and I just carry it around with me and I rove around the room working with individual students.

I find it best to have separate folders/books for each subject area. I am currently using the following Assessment folders with my Grade 1 class:

Guided Reading Book (Reading)

Student Conferences Folder (Reading)

Maths Assessment Checklist Book (Mathematics)

(See how I set up my Guided Reading Conferences Folder in more detail HERE:)

All of my Assessment Checklists are available in my TPT store:

Reading Assessment Maths Checklists

I then have folders with all of my students actual assessments in there. These folders stay in my Office as another form of evidence of student progress.

Maths Assessment (Maths CATS)

Reading Assessment (Running Records and Sight Word, Letter ID tests)

Writing Assessment Folder (Writing CATS)

Some teachers like having digital checklists. These can either be a 'tick' system or even colour coded. I know some teachers I work with like to create checklists and fill in the table using colours like green, yellow and red. This gives you a quick visual representation of the areas of need in your classroom in particular subject areas.

Green - student has achieved outcome

Yellow - student has achieved part of outcome

Red - student has not achieved outcome

These sorts of checklists can be made using programs like Excel or Word. Simply create a table and type in the learning outcomes up the top and your students names on the side. Fill in the boxes using the 'Shade' tool.

Socrative: Formative Assessment Tool

Socrative is a website (also available in an app) that assists teachers in instantly obtaining information about what their students know. Teachers can easily create their own quizzes and tests while students use their devices to answer them. Teachers are instantly given their results as evidence which can be stored and filed for future reference.

See a YouTube Tutorial on Socrative HERE

iDoceo

iDoceo is a place for you to house all your checklists and student results. It is a purchased app ($17.99). You can create class lists for each of your subjects (if you teach multiple subjects or classes) and add photos of your students as a visual reminder. It also has a feature where you can take photos of your students assessments and attach them to each individual child to allow you to access their tasks at any time.

Although this tool takes a long time to set up, once its all up and running its very user friendly and will save you loads of time and paper!