Assessment Tools
Making sense of the enormous amount of student data in any classroom or school is probably the biggest challenge we face individually and in our school communities. Here you'll find everything from one-page templates created by teachers for use in their classrooms to videos of staff teams poring over large data sets. We don't have all the answers, but we do provide tools to help you ask better questions as you evaluate students and talk about assessments with your colleagues.
Latest Content
Temporary Strategies
Clare Landrigan confers with a student and discovers that a tool designed to help the reader is actually hindering her learning. The experience causes her to reflect on the need for flexibility when matching strategy scaffolds to young readers.
Observations and Test Preparation
Christopher Carlson takes on the role of observer and researcher to analyze his students' needs when it comes to test-taking skills, and enlists students in the process of reflecting on his data to implement new test-taking strategies.
Student Self-Assessment Strategies
Melanie Meehan works with fifth graders to help them create their own set of indicators of success in a writing unit.
Tests of Time
This vivid new poem from Shirley McPhillips, explores the disconnect between exams and life.
What’s a Great Workshop Day?
Mary Lee Hahn considers how the success of any day has to integrate observations from conferring, lessons, and share sessions.
Planning and the Tuesday Effect
Mary Lee Hahn realizes how much a workshop approach has changed her planning process and comfort level with the unexpected.
Getting Creative with Writing Celebrations
Celebrations are the pause that refreshes between writing units for many teachers. Melanie Meehan shares suggestions for creative celebrations.
Growing Toward Independence
Cathy Mere shares what to look for and what to try next with young learners who are easily distracted and struggling to concentrate during independent reading.
Alternatives to Home/School Reading Logs
There may be few literacy homework assignments more despised by families than the dreaded reading log. Gigi McAllister proposes some alternatives, and explains how she keeps families in the loop on reading progress.
Core Memories and Gotcha Moments
Jennifer Schwanke explains why pop quizzes can be damaging to students by using a pop culture reference.
Unstable Labels: Stop the Race to Z
Jan Burkins and Kim Yaris consider the insignificance of what levels convey about young readers.
Reading, Engagement, and Kidwatching
Katrina Edwards looked around her first-grade reading workshop one day in winter and it wasn’t a pretty picture. Many students were doing anything but reading. She develops a plan to approach the issue of time on task thoughtfully.
Using Reading Notebook Covers for Reflection and Goal Setting
Clare Landrigan and Tammy Mulligan are using reading notebook covers in ingenious ways.
Data That Matters
What information is gathered by a teacher sitting in a rocking chair quietly watching her students? Christy Rush-Levine discovers it is plenty.
Getting Started with Digital Portfolios
Megan Skogstad shares advice launching digital portfolios.
Launching Student Data Binders
Megan Skogstad shares lots of practical advice for creating and sustaining student data binders.
Growth Lines
Deb Gaby thinks about the importance of baseline information early in the school year.
Setting Goals During Mini-Celebrations
Melanie Meehan recommends linking goal setting to small celebrations as a great way to build community and skills at the same time.
Student Learning Targets
Christy Rush-Levine finds she has to rethink learning targets for her middle school students if she wants students to pursue complex and lifelong reading goals.
Setting Goals with Students
Melanie Meehan shares anchor charts and strategies for goal-setting.
Rethinking Reading Goals
Maria Caplin develops a system for helping students move beyond simple goals like noting the number of pages read.
Weekly Check-In Sheets
Are you finding effort from students is flagging? Katherine Sokolowski develops check-in sheets as a way to lift student energy and reflection.
Digital Status of the Class
Maria Caplin explains how a digital status sheet saves minutes every week that add up to extra hours of instructional time over the year.
Wyatt’s Running Record
Bitsy Parks completes a running record with first grader Wyatt as part of our running record series.
Running Record: Kaenon
Bitsy Parks completes a running record with first grader Kaenon.
Jillian’s Running Record
Bitsy Parks completes a running record with first grader Jillian. This is part of our new running records series.
Running Records: Rationale and Procedure
Bitsy Parks explains her procedures for completing running records in her first-grade classroom. This is the first installment in a video series on running records.
Letter to Franki Sibberson’s Students
Here is a letter Brenda Power wrote to Franki Sibberson's students about why adults observe children, if you're looking for ways to explain the presence of adult visitors in classrooms.
Grading in Literacy Workshops
Katherine Sokolowski finds grading student work in her fifth-grade classroom becomes far more interesting when students take responsibility for choosing what will be graded.
Peer Evaluation of Student Writing
Megan Ginther found she was spending too much time responding to student writing, and just as important, taking on too much of the responsibility for improvement. She tackled the issue by developing a new program for peer evaluation of student writing.
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