Everyday assessment activities

Hello group members,

Do you have an informal assessment activity that you conduct during each class with students?  If so, please tell us:

What the student population is;

What the subject matter is;

What the activity is;

What you use the activity to show.

I'll start:  when I worked as an adult ESL instructor, for intermediate and advanced level students I started the class by having pairs ask each other what they did/ate/read/watched the evening before.  I would observe and listen to the students as they talked and noted things like use of past tense, vocab, fluency, and ability to engage in "conversation gambits".  That gave me direction for how to work on oral skills with the class.  This activity is simple to convert to focusing on the future tense for example.  

What are some other activities that have worked in your classroom?

 

 

Comments

Our staff has been focusing on writing instruction using the TEAL Just Write! Guide. There are several writing activities we've used that are perfect for checking student understanding. For example, a "quick write" or writing to learn activity could be done at the end of a lesson. The prompt would be "Write about the three most important things you learned in today's lesson." Or "Write down questions you still have about today's lesson. Then exchange your paper with another student and discuss what you have written and see if you can answer the questions together." Of course, the teacher will walk around the room and look at what students have written or he might collect the student writing at the end of class.

Our teachers are starting to integrate these writing strategies to assess what students know prior to a lesson (Entry Sllips) and then after a lesson (Exit Slips). We are experimenting with ways to use the writing strategies with ESL learners as well.

 

Hi Mary,

Thanks for sharing that activity - sounds like it is pretty effective at providing you with some good info/feedback for students to focus on.  I noticed that both of the activities we each described included the component of "teacher going around and observing" - there were many times when I learned most about a student's need or ability just by observing.  It's powerful.

Here's a link to the TEAL guide that you note in your message:

https://teal.ed.gov/documents/TEAL_JustWriteGuide.pdf

 

How about others?  What about reading?  or math? or other focus areas?  Please share your activities with us!