A simple and effective assessment for ALL ages!

Assessment, for lack of a better word... There are many ways we can assess our students. It doesn't need to be a full on test, or special one-on-one time.. Sometimes it just takes a quick group discussion to get an idea of how your students are doing. Something that I used to do with my 3rd graders (I taught 3rd grade for a semester) is have them come in, grab a card off the white board, which usually had a vocabulary word on it, and they would take turns defining what was on their card as a whole group discussion. I haven't been able to do this with Kindergarten until recently because I just got a brand. spanking.  new. magnetic. whiteboard! YAY! Anyway, what I love about this strategy is that you can literally do it from pre-k to high school. Also, it's student choice, which boosts self-confidence.. AND sometimes our students understand things better when it comes from their classmates.  

Here's what I do... I bought some cute cards from my local teacher supply store. I've had them for a couple of years, so I can't remember what brand exactly. I'm sure if you look at Carson Delosa or Creative Teaching Press they will have some. I laminate each card, and add a piece of magnetic tape to the back of each one. EASY! I like to do it this way so I can use a dry erase marker and change them out whenever. As you can see above I have upper and lowercase letters and our first sight words. The letters I have are specific letter sounds we are working on. The students go to the board when they come in and grab a card and take it to their sit spot. We then take turns reading our sight word or letter. I might have them tell me whether it's a lower/uppercase letter and what sound it makes. You could do this activity with numbers, shapes, letter recognition/sounds, sight words, etc etc etc! I like this because it's student choice, which eases anxiety. Instead of calling a student out and asking them to tell you a letter or sight word they might not know in front of the class, this keeps them from feeling embarrassed. If they are picking a word/letter they are confident in knowing, then let them! Someone else might not know that letter in the class and will learn it from their classmate and vice versa! They will have way more fun choosing what card they have instead of being put on the spot. I hope this is something you can use in your classroom! I'm sorry if i've rambled or have been unclear. I currently have poison ivy and took some benedry for the evening so I'm a little fuzzy, ha! I hope everyone has a great week!! Happy Teaching!