The Three Forms of Assessment All New Teachers Should Utilize

Assessments can strike fear into the hearts of students. What the kids don’t know is that assessments can wreak a grown-up version of “test anxiety” on teachers.  For rookie and veteran teachers alike, creating all forms of assessment — especially larger exams — is labor-intensive and time-consuming.

Creating a good test takes more time than people realize.

A test should:

• Accurately measures student knowledge
• Be neither too easy nor difficult 
• Awards points in a fair and equitable way
• Emphasize the content you want to be emphasized 
• Be creative and interesting

Needless to say, many new teachers are surprised by how much of their time and mental energy is spent creating assessments. 

Let’s start with the basics.

What is assessment?

Assessment is how teachers evaluate, measure, and document what their students know. 

Simply put, an instructor attempts to teach a concept or skill.  Assessment is then used to find out if the students learned that concept or skill.   

In this article, we’ll answer common questions about three forms of assessment all teachers should be doing in their first three years.  We’ll also cover a few other forms of assessment that, in our opinion, you can wait until you’re more experienced before attempting.

The Three Forms of Assessment All New Teachers Should Utilize

1. Formative Assessments

Formative Assessment Is Tasting the Soup As You Prepare It

Let’s say you’re preparing soup for dinner.  Formative assessment is like periodically tasting the soup while you’re making it.  Does the soup need more salt?  Should I give the vegetables more time to cook?  Sure, you follow a recipe (lesson plan), but you might need to slightly adjust the preparation as needed.  If you don’t taste the soup throughout the process, you won’t know what adjustments to make.

How essential is formative assessment?

Formative assessment is, in our opinion, the most important and most useful form of assessment for you as a teacher.  An assessment for learning, a formative assessment provides you with feedback on student knowledge.  Plus, it lets students practice what they are learning.  A quick “taste of the soup”, formative assessments make it possible to adjust instruction based on the feedback.

How often should formative assessments be done?

Formative assessments should be done daily because they give you insight into how well students understand what they are being taught and where you need to make adjustments.  

What about grading or awarding points for formative assessments?

Ideally, formative assessment should be of low or no point value.  They are done to inform you, and the students, of their understanding of the topic rather than mastery of it.  

Many teachers feel that awarding points for formative assessments helps to motivate students.  We hear, ‘My students won’t do it unless they get points for it.” quite often.  Feel free to award participation points to formative assessments to ensure that students continue to complete them.

2. Summative Assessments

Summative Assessment Is Serving the Completed Soup

Summative assessment is like serving the finished soup to your dinner guests.  When the cooking process is over, you don’t wonder how it will taste.  With your periodic taste tests (formative assessments), you already know the soup has been well prepared and is ready to eat.  

In your classroom, there will be occasional surprises when it comes to test scores — you work with young people after all.  But if you are completely shocked at how well (or poorly) your class did on a unit test, you likely need to “taste the soup” a bit more before serving it.

How do summative assessments differ from formative assessments?

Summative assessment evaluates student learning, concept knowledge, and mastery.  It is an assessment of learning rather than a formative assessment’s evaluation for learning.  

What are the different types of summative assessment?

The most common forms of summative assessments are tests, essays, writing assignments, projects, or presentations.  Summative assessments are trending away from multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, and true/false tests.  It’s more common to see tests that require critical thinking and the creative application of knowledge to a new situation.  See our article on student-centered assessment for more on this trend.

Should you skip summative assessments and just do formative assessments?

It’s tempting to stick with formative assessments but students need the opportunity to demonstrate their learning on a larger scale than formative assessments can provide.  Additionally, there are more creative ways to approach summative assessments than there were in the past.  Therefore, no, you do not want to skip summative assessments.  

What about students who have test anxiety?  What options exist for them?

Unless there is something formal in place (like an IEP or 504) the general rule of thumb is that students need to take the established assessment.  However, there are things you can do to help a student relieve their anxiety.  Talking through what makes them nervous, providing a few minutes of extra time, or allowing the student to take the exam in an alternate setting are all options you can employ at your discretion.  Be wary of making larger accommodations, however, because this can open you up to conversations about inconsistency and unfairness.

For students who have formal accommodations, make sure to use those.  This may be in the form of an alternative assessment.  

What advice can you give to make creating tests easier?

Some test-making tips for new teachers:

• Keep your tests simple the first few years – multiple choice, fill-in, and a few questions that require students to write.
• When planning each unit, create a list of key vocabulary terms along with 5-7 essential questions.  Create your test around those concepts. (This document can also become the study guide you give students.)
• As you teach each lesson, you’ll think of potential test questions. Keep a document open and add questions while each topic is fresh in your mind. 
• Beg, borrow, and steal test questions from colleagues, old textbooks, or wherever you can find them.

3. Performance Assessments

What are performance assessments? 

Performance assessments emphasize developing a response to real-world, complex problems, often in a process-oriented way.  They demonstrate not just knowledge acquisition but also skill and concept acquisition.   Despite its name, there is no requirement that students perform in front of an audience.

What are some examples of performance assessments?

Either group or individual projects like:

• Solving a problem
• Writing a city council proposal
• Creating a model or lab experiment with a write-up
• Preparing for a debate or civil discourse
• Proposing a solution to a real-world situation
• Developing a new process for a scenario

These types of assessments are generally highly engaging for students and require that students demonstrate both their content knowledge and their skill level.

Three Additional Forms of Assessment to Know About 

*Note: In our opinion, the following forms of assessment are not essential for new teachers to incorporate.  However, depending on your situation or readiness, you may want to give them a try.

Alternative Assessments

When and how are alternative assessments used?

You may start out doing alternative assessments for specific students who have 504s, IEPs, or other accommodations as a way to get a feel for options.  As you develop alternative assessments for these students, you may find yourself utilizing it as an option for all students.  

The downside to alternative assessments is the time that needs to be invested in creating a new type of assessment.  For that reason, we think first-year teachers should forgo experimenting with alternative assessments except in instances when students require them.

Diagnostic Assessments

What are diagnostic assessments?

Diagnostic assessments are an assessment of what students already know.  The purpose of giving a diagnostic assessment is to guide the teacher’s planning and instruction so that lessons match the student’s current level.  Due to their nature, they are given at the beginning of a lesson or course and are generally of very low or no point value.  

Do new teachers need to do diagnostic assessments?

Though diagnostic assessment can be a tool to guide how you structure a unit, we rank them as a low priority for a new teacher because you can get the same information through formative assessment.  Save diagnostics until you have a few years under your belt and you are tweaking rather than fully creating all of your curriculum.

Portfolio Assessments

What is a portfolio assessment and is it truly an assessment?

Arguably not an assessment at all, portfolio assessments are a compilation of student work that shows growth and learning over time.  Pieces are generally chosen by the student from categories created by the teacher.

When does a portfolio assessment make sense?

Portfolio assessments provide an end-of-term, comprehensive portrait of student learning.   They can build a student’s reflective skills as a term’s worth of work is reviewed and build the student’s self-confidence to show the level of growth. 

Amanda Melsby has been a professional educator for 20 years.  She taught English before working as an assistant principal and later as a high school principal.  Amanda holds an Ed.D. in Educational Practice and Leadership and is currently a dean of teaching and learning.