Set 1

Whole Class Consenso-gram

A continuum is explained to students. This continuum establishes some type of range (ie: from 0 to 10, from 1 to 100, from red to green). Students indicate where they believe they fall on the continuum to help themselves see where growth needs to happen and to help the teacher understand how well they are doing with the learning. Students and teacher may monitor growth daily or weekly.

Individual Knowledge Meters

A mini, desk-sized version of a class consensogram chart. Here students individually indicate their personal rankings on a content-based question or a process skill. Teacher can ask students to leave their individual knowledge meters on the edge of their desks so monitoring can take place. Thanks to Jillian Welch and Barbara Hughes from Alyce Taylor ES for inventing the great name. Download our individual version from our website.

Traffic Light Homework

Have students Traffic Light their work, marking it with a green, yellow or red dot to indicate the level of help they need. Allow students with green and yellow dots to provide descriptive feedback to one another, while you provide feedback for the students with red dots. (Jan Chappuis, Educational Leadership, November 05)

Colored Highlighter Markers

Each student has three colored highlighters or markers (green/yellow/orange – think stoplight). Students can rank their understanding of a topic using the highlighters: green – got it, yellow – o.k. but, have questions, orange – I need help. Clever students will put a yellow cap on a green pen to show different levels of understanding. (Holly Young, ReedHigh School)

Yellow Brick Road – Take a Stand: What is your level of understanding?

Students can self-assess their understanding by using the road metaphor to explain their understanding.

Under-Construction, Rocky Road, Yellow Brick Road, Highway to Heaven. (Robin Fogarty & Associates)

The Windshield

Ask Students to self-assess their understanding of the material you have assigned using the windshield.

Clear as glass, Bugs on the windshield, Covered with Mud. (Carol Ann Tomlinson)

Yes-No cards

Give students two index cards of different colors and a piece of tape. Have them tape the cards together, back to back. Students should write the word YES on one color card and the word NO on the other. (Taken from “Sit and Get” Won’t Grow Dendrites, by Marcia Tate)

Flashcard Pockets
Students create a quick foldable* with two pockets labeled "I Know Really Well" and "I Don't Know This Yet." Students make flashcards on any subject, and quiz each other during class transition times. They move flashcards back and forth between the two pockets depending on how they do when they quiz each other. Students can also work individually on the "I Don't Know This Yet" section of cards by finding problems to try that match the skill, or by finding another student who can explain the topic to them.(Holly Young, RPDP, Wendy Houghton, & Lisa Baehr,ReedHigh School)

* To Create a Two Pocket Foldable (From Dinah Zike)

  1. Fold a sheet of paper (8-1/2 x 11) in half like a hamburger
  2. Open the folded paper and fold on of the long sides up two inches to form a pocket. Refold along the hamburger fold so that the newly formed pockets are on the inside.
  3. Glue or tape the outer edges of the two-inch fold.

Others that need no explanation: Fist to Five, Thumbs up/Thumbs Down

Set 2

Application Cards

After teaching about an important theory, principle, or procedure, ask students to write down at least one real-world application for what they have just learned to determine how well they can transfer their learning. Quickly read once through the applications and categorize them according to their quality. Pick out a broad range of examples and present them to the class.

Chain Notes

Students pass around an envelope on which the teacher has written one questionabout the topic. When the envelope reaches a student, he/she spends a moment to respond to the question and then places the response in the envelope. Discussing the patterns of responses with students can lead to better teaching and learning.

The Three-Minute Exit Ticket

Students must provide a brief written answer to a pre-determined question (like an Essential Question) before leaving the class after learning has occurred. The teacher analyzes the short answers quickly to determine how students are progressing in their learning. There are articles and resources for this technique on the WritingFix website’s Writing Across the Curriculum Page. Direct link:

The Three-Minute Hamburger Paragraph

Teach the concept of the paragraph simultaneously while checking in with students’ understanding! Students must provide a brief written answer (in the form of a five-sentence paragraph) to a pre-determined question before leaving the class after learning has occurred. The teacher analyzes the short answers quickly to determine how students are progressing in their learning. There are articles and resources for this technique on the WritingFix website’s Writing Across the Curriculum Page. Direct link:

The two-minute Essay

During the last few minutes of the class period, ask students to answer on a half-sheet of paper: "What is the most important point you learned today?" and "What point remains least clear to you?" The purpose is to elicit data about students' comprehension of a particular class session. During the next class periods emphasize the issues illuminated by your students' comments.

One-Sentence Summaries

Students summarize knowledge of a topic by constructing a single sentence that answers the questions: "Who does what to whom, when, where, how, and why?" The purpose is to require students to select only the defining features of an idea. Evaluate the quality of each summary quickly and holistically. Note whether students have identified the essential concepts of the class topic and their interrelationships. Share your observations with your students.

Directed Paraphrasing

Ask students to write a layman’s "translation" of something they have just learned—geared to a specified individual or audience—to assess their ability to comprehend and transfer concepts. Categorize student responses according to characteristics you feel are important. Analyze the responses both within and across categories, noting ways you could address student needs.

Set 3

Learning Logs (and margin responses)

A learning log is a kind of journal that enables students to keep notes and then respond to those notes. In the margins or alongside their notes, students should be prompted to write responses to the learned material. The major reason for using them is to encourage children to be in control of their own learning and to promote thinking through writing. There are articles and resources for this technique on the WritingFix website’s Writing Across the Curriculum Page. Direct link:

Text Response Journals

Similar to a learning log, a text response journal is a place for students to express personal reactions and to wonder about events, themes, and ideas in a text. Students are encouraged to react to everything they read in a text or article. Teachers may use these journals to respond to each child individually, sharing questions, feelings, and ideas about literature and making suggestions for further reading or related activities. Some teachers hold individual reading conferences with their students and use these text response journals as part of the conferences.

Set 4

“Word-Splash” generated one-sentence summary

Collect key vocabulary words from textual material that students will be reading or hearing, or that they have already read or heard during a lesson. If this is a pre-assessment: using the words to launch their thinking, students create one-sentence summaries about what they think they’ll be learning about, and what they think they already know about the topic. If this is a formative assessment: using the words to launch their thinking, students create one-sentence summaries about what they think is the biggest or most important idea from the day’s lesson. The teacher can quickly scan the sentences to note the depth of student thinking on the topic.

Visualizing Vocabulary

Students define a new word in their own words, then select or draw three or four pictures that represent the word. Finally, students write a sentence explaining why the pictures are good examples of the word.

Set 5

Student-Generated Test Questions

Allow students to write test questions and correct/incorrect answers for specified topics, in a format consistent with course exams. This will give students the opportunity to evaluate the course topics, reflect on what they understand, and demonstrate what they believe are good test items. Challenge students to create questions whose answers require more than a simple explanation; challenge students to create questions that compare/contrast concepts, questions that require one to interpret and apply concepts, and questions that require students to think in scope and sequence. There are articles and resources for this technique on the WritingFix website’s Writing Across the Curriculum Page. Direct link:

1-2pt. Questions (AKA: Skinny/Fat Questions, Thick/Thin Questions)

Good readers generate questions as they read. It is a good strategy for making meaning from both fictional and non-fictional text. To assist students in applying this reading comprehension strategy for both in-class and homework reading assignments give students a choice in which type of questions they want to ask; each type is worth points earned.

1 pt. questions are factual; a right or wrong answer (knowledge level question). 2 pt. questions are discussion; not a right or wrong answer; they provoke thought; stimulate new ways of looking at the story (upper level of Blooms).

(Source: Larry Lewin)

Set 6

Analogies

Teach students to use analogies to show their level of understanding about a given topic. Steps for creating analogies are listed in Marzano’s A Handbook for Classroom Instruction that Works in chapter 4. You can also find graphic organizers in the first section of the NNWP’s guide Going Deep with Compare and Contrast Thinking.

Metaphor Cards

Similar to analogies, creating metaphors can help teachers assess what students know about a given topic. An easy way to do a quick formative assessment is to allow students to create metaphors using metaphor cards. Spread out five or six cards on a table and have students choose a card to create a metaphor individually and then share in a group. Remember, a metaphor can compare the topic to what it is like and what it is not like. You can find pages of metaphor cards in the NNWP’s guide Going Deep with Compare and Contrast Thinking,make your own from magazines, old calendars, or images from the internet.

Opposite Acrostic Poems

Acrostic poetry assignments require students to brainstorm words related to bigger words. When comparing and contrasting students can write Opposite Acrostic Poems to show how two subjects compare. Here’s an example:

Mainly
Orbits
Our
Nice Planet / Solar
Twinkling
Astronomical
Reactor

Etch-a-Sketch

Students draw symbols, icons, or pictures to represent ideas being presented in lecture or other form of presentation. Encourage students to choose two vocabulary words or two content area topics that have similarities and differences and have them do their comparisons in the Etch-a-Sketch. Students discuss each other’s sketches after they have processed the information through drawing. Students can synthesize their ideas in writing after the drawing and discussions have occurred. A blank Etch-a-sketch template can be found on-line at:

Flip Books

Flip books can be organized in many different formats. You can have your students make a flip book that compares one topic on one side of the book and another topic on the other side of the book. One of the most thoughtful flip books I have seen was completed by Cassie Jenkins’ middle school students showing cell division. This was a great example of a summative assessment using compare and contrast.

Double Entry Journals

A great use of Double Entry Journals when assessing what students know is using Text-to-Self, Text-to-Text, or Text-to-World Connections. Students fill in a passage from a novel they are reading or a section from a textbook and then on the other side of their journal page they can show how the passage relates to themselves, to something else they have read, or something happening in the world.

Diamond Poem (or Diamante Poem)

A Diamond Poem is a shape poem that requires little poetry knowledge to create and comes with its own formula that ultimately examines two concepts tha are opposites of each other. Here is an example and the formula:

The Diamond Poem:
Line1: one noun
Line2: two adjectives that describe the noun in line 1
Line3: three –ing verbs the writer associates with the nouns in line 1
Line4: four nouns - the first two nouns are associated with the noun in line 1; the other two are associated with the noun in line 7
Line5: three –ing verbs the writer associates with the nouns in line 7
Line6: two adjectives that describe the noun in line 7
Line7: one noun that is the opposite of the noun in line 1 / A Diamond Poem Example:
Mountain
High, rocky
Flying, looking, killing
Eagle, power, fear, rabbit
Living, moving, making noise
Deep, beautiful
Valley

Set 7

Conferences

There are many types of conferences including reading, writing, goal setting, evaluation, and coaching. The major purposes are to collaborate, assess, and guide.

Discussion

A discussion provides a safe, open forum where children are encouraged to speak, listen, and respond to opinions, feelings, and ideas regarding the designated topic.

Interviews

An interview is structured or unstructured dialogue with students in which the student reports his/her reaction or response to a single question or a series of questions. This typically provides an opportunity for the teacher to determine the student's depth of understanding rather than whether the student can provide the "correct" answer. Questioning may follow a period of observation to discover if the student's perception of a situation is the same as the observer's.

Oral Attitude Surveys

Attitude surveys note in a systematic manner students' self-reflections regarding group and individual performance and affective characteristics such as effort, values, and interest. Providing an oral survey allows students to share their ideas, learn from others, and deepen the way they think about the topics being discussed.

Oral Presentations

Oral presentations include speeches, storytelling, retellings, recitations, drama, videos, debates, and oral interpretation and are evaluated according to pre-determined criteria.

Set 8

Checklists

Checklists direct students to examine specific criteria in their own work and determine whether or not they have completed all expectations set forth by the teacher. If used with a Consenso-gram, the students can also determine to what degree they have completed all expectations. Excellent checklists can be easily created at this website:

Comic Strips

By creating comic strips or cartoon squares, students are encouraged to think analytically about the topic, characters, events, or themes they've explored in ways that expand their critical thinking by focusing on crystallizing the significant points of the topic in a few short scenes.

Demonstrations

A demonstration transforms ideas into something concrete and observable through visual, audio, art, drama, movement, and/or music. This could also include opportunities to demonstrate and explain procedures and strategies such as a science experiment or a solution to a non-routine math problem.

Graphic Organizers

Graphic organizers, when used as pre-assessments, during-teaching-assessments, or post-assessments, provide both teachers and students with an opportunity to sort through big ideas they’ve learned about. A marvelous place to get new and free graphic organizers is:

  • Venn and other comparison charts
  • Concept maps
  • Scope and sequence charts

Memory Matrix

Students fill in cells of a two-dimensional diagram for which instructor has provided labels. For example, in a music course, labels might consist of periods (Baroque, Classical) by countries (Germany, France, Britain); students enter composers in cells to demonstrate their ability to remember and classify key concepts. Tally the numbers of correct and incorrect responses in each cell. Analyze differences both between and among the cells. Look for patterns among the incorrect responses and decide what might be the cause(s).

Internal conflicts? / External conflicts?
The Catcher in the Rye
“The Cold Equation”

Rubrics

A rubric can be used to help students analytically examine the progress of their work or their learning. The easiest rubric-making site on the Internet is still:

Snapshot page/Scrapbook page

Think about your old fashion photo album that had several pictures and a sentence or two below each picture describing it. This assessment technique is a great way to have students illustrate and write about a topic. This is similar to the Etch-a-sketch. There is a template that we adapted from Larry Lewin at: