Assessment Tools and Apps

“Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.” - Robert Collier​
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In my book, The 30 Goals Challenge for Teachers, I encourage teachers to reflect on the way they assess their students for Goal 17: Re-evaluate Value. Assessment shouldn't make students feel like quitting. Instead, assessment should help students celebrate the learning they've grasped and reflect on their journey achieving that learning. Assessment should also offer insight on which areas students need to strive to grasp and help them find solutions on the best way they can overcome the obstacles that have prevented them from achieving that knowledge. Below is a slide presentation (free to download) and bookmarks to provide you with ideas!  

Tips

  • Many tool and apps help students receive ongoing assessment in engaging ways. Try assessing students regularly with these options- clickers, exit tickets, admission slips, ongoing portfolios, student response systems,  graphic organizers, peer feedback, self-evaluation, draw responses, games, and quizzes.
  • Nearpod , Socrative, Answer Pad, and GoFormative provide various assessment options from quizzes to draw responses.
  • When giving exit slips/tickets/cards, make sure this is at the end of class and something that can be accomplished within 5 minutes or less.
    • Check out this slide with many suggestions, including the 321 Exit! Get students to use Google Docs to fill out these exit slips digitally and keep a copy! 
    • ​Find a Tweet exit slip here!
  • Admit slips are given at the beginning of the class to help students reflect on their homework or the previous assignment and should also be accomplished in 5 minutes or less.
  • It is more powerful to get students to come up with their own questions and test their peers than to just answer multiple choice questions.
  • Get students to create games on TinyTap (iOS/Android) or GetKahoot (Any device).
  • Throw a small nerf ball to a student who answers your question then creates a question for another peer to answer. The students asks the question aloud and throws the ball to a selected peer. Allow them to have 3 helplines such as search the textbook or a website or get a peer to text the answer to them.
  • Try assessment with interactive whiteboard tools and apps like Educreations, SyncSpace (iOS/Android), Explain Everything, and ScreenChomp.
    • Students can come up with their own word problems to solve or show how they solved a word problem. See this example by Mrs. Wideen’s first graders using Educreations!
    • Students can give quick peer feedback. One 5 minute peer feedback activity is Two Stars and a Wish. Students upload the peer’s short writing or creation onto the whiteboard and draw a star on two areas they like and with their voice provide specific feedback. They also include a wish or area they want their peers to improve.
  • Students can contribute reflections, fact, trivia and resources about a topic using the Padlet or Linoit web tool and app (any device).
  • I Spy is a type of formative assessment in which students take photos to reflect their learning. Find this activity in my book, Learning to Go: Lesson Ideas for Mobile Devices.
  • To assess with video quizzes try EdPuzzle.
  • If you don’t have a set of clickers, then try Plickers for formative assessment. It is a free app a teacher puts on their device to scan paper bars students hold up to answer a question.

Bookmarks

Find the tools listed above and many more resources in the bookmarks below.