Assessment is the cornerstone of effective education. Formative assessment, for example, lets you know if and how your students are making progress, with vital information on where you need to address gaps, while summative assessment gives you an overall picture of their performance on a topic.
However, it can take time and effort to research classroom assessment techniques and learn how to integrate them into your everyday teaching. In this blog, we break down some key assessment ideas so you can save time on planning and spend more actually teaching.
Key Takeaways
- Classroom assessment techniques help you understand student progress throughout the learning cycle, in a lower-stakes way than formal exams.
- Quick feedback gives you the power to adapt your instruction rapidly.
- Techniques like peer assessment, kinesthetic exercises, summarizing, memory matrices, and digital simulations can be highly engaging and help students demonstrate knowledge and skills.
What Are Classroom Assessment Techniques?
These techniques help you understand your students’ current levels of knowledge and understanding, where they might need correction, and when you can move on to something more challenging.
While you can do this through homework tasks or big, formal exams, CATs are smaller, lower-stakes exercises that can integrate regular assessment into your classroom.
Importance of Classroom Assessment Techniques
Regularly assessing your students in the classroom can give you a better picture of their progress than just a single summative assessment at the end of the unit. By using a range of techniques as part of your assessment strategy, you can test them across a variety of skills and knowledge sectors to build a more holistic understanding of their ability.
What’s more, smaller formative assessments give you quicker feedback, without the need for laborious grading. This can help you respond to student needs more promptly and address misconceptions before they take root.
And because these assessments are generally short low-stakes exercises, students will probably feel less stressed by the prospect of testing. Working with their peers in a familiar classroom environment can also reduce anxiety.
Examples of Classroom Assessment Techniques
There are hundreds of assessment techniques to choose from. Which one is right for your classroom will depend on the age and ability level of your students, your subject area, and what skills and knowledge you want to assess.
We’ve listed 5 top assessment methods below.
1. Peer assessment
Peer assessment (sometimes known as pair assessment) involves your students working in pairs or small groups to assess each other.
Why would you use it?
Peer assessment benefits your students by helping them develop a deeper understanding. As they review their partner’s work, they’ll need to have a good grasp of the topic to grade it and give feedback. It can also improve communication skills, and being able to give useful feedback will help in their future working life.
When can you use it?
This is best used after students have completed an exercise or topic of study. You could ask them to peer assess an exercise done in the classroom or completed previously as homework. If you’re also asking them to set questions, do this once you’ve reviewed a topic together.
How does it work?
- Assign an exercise or quiz for students to complete individually.
- Optional extra: ask students to write their own quiz questions to pass to a partner.
- Tell students to swap their answers with a peer.
- Students then review and grade each other’s work. This can be summative (assigning points), formative (giving constructive feedback), or as simple as color coding strengths and weaknesses.
- Give students a grading rubric if needed. Where students may need scaffolding for providing feedback, give them example phrases or sentences.
2. Topic Summarization
Asking students to create a summary of what they’ve learned is a quick and easy exercise that you can use in a variety of lesson scenarios. It can be as short as one word or sentence, or a more extended paragraph. You could even do all three, asking students to condense further and further to distill the most important concepts.
Why would you use it?
Summarizing is a very useful skill that students are likely to need in their further studies or careers. You can also use summarizing activities to find out what students consider to be the most important part of a topic and how well they understand it.
When can you use it?
This assessment method is ideal for the end of a lesson or unit when you want students to demonstrate understanding and produce something they’ll hopefully remember.
How does it work?
- Ask students to summarize the lesson or unit of study in one paragraph, one sentence, or one word.
- Students can write this in their notebooks or on a sticky note to add to a display board.
- You could also ask students to submit this online using a shared document program (e.g., Google Docs) or a digital polling tool (like Mentimeter).
3. Kinesthetic exercises
Kinesthetic exercises require students to show knowledge and understanding through movement. For example, you could ask students to move to one side of the room or the other depending on their answer to a question. Or, you could ask students to create a tableau in groups to represent a concept.
Why would you use it?
Some students may not excel in reading and writing, which can hold them back from fully demonstrating their learning. Kinesthetic exercises give them a chance to show their progress. Additionally, such activities can be highly engaging and memorable, helping students retain their learning. Linking mental processing to movement can even contribute to cognitive development.
When can you use it?
This is great for midway through or at the end of a lesson to help students cement their understanding of a topic.
How does it work?
- Display a question on the board and ask students to move to one side or corner of the room depending on their answer. Repeat two to three times with different questions.
- For example, in a science lesson, ask students what they think the outcome of a particular experiment might be, and assign a possible outcome to each corner of the room.
- You could ask individual students to explain their responses verbally.
- Ask students to move around the room. When you call out, students must work together in groups to create a quick still image to illustrate a concept. It’s fine if the concepts are quite abstract—their responses might be quite funny and memorable!
4. Memory matrix
Students can practice their skills of analysis and recall of information by creating analytical diagrams. These can take a variety of forms. For example, in a memory matrix, students complete a grid of rows and columns as they learn the topic, and then try to reproduce it from memory later.
Here’s an example for a historical topic:
| Factor | Event 1 | Event 2 | Event 3 |
| Religion | |||
| Personality | |||
| Economy | |||
| Military |
Why would you use it?
This technique tests students’ recall of simple knowledge and pushes them to analyze it. By filling in the grid, they also create connections between facts and ideas.
When can you use it?
Students can complete the initial memory matrix during the unit of study (or individual lessons for smaller topics). At the end of the unit, use it to test their knowledge and recall.
How does it work?
- Distribute blank grids or instruct students to draw their own.
- For an easier task, give them some or all of the headings for the rows and columns. As a greater challenge, ask students to design the matrix themselves.
- Ask students to fill in the matrix as you go through the topic.
- At the end of the topic, give them a version of the grid with some answers removed—or completely blank for a greater challenge.
5. Digital simulations and games
Digital simulations replicate real-world scenarios, such as science experiments or ecosystems, in virtual form to provide more context to learning. Using an online testing tool like TAO, you can ask students to immerse themselves in an interactive, gamified assessment environment.
Why would you use it?
Simulating real scenarios can make assessments feel more relevant and engaging. They can also help students develop creative thinking and communication skills. What’s more, using multimedia digital tools can be highly motivating to students who enjoy using computers and apps outside school.
When can you use it?
This would make a useful conclusion to a unit of study, where you ask students to synthesize their learning so far and apply this to the simulation.
How does it work?
- Create a digital simulation such as a virtual jungle ecosystem or digital shopfront. Platforms like TAO let you create these kinds of interactive, multimedia assessments using Portable Custom Interactions.
- Ask students to answer the questions solo or in pairs.
- Input can include dragging and dropping items, dragging sliders, or clicking on an image.
- You could even introduce a chatbot to get students to demonstrate language or reasoning skills.
Tying it all Together
Having a range of classroom assessment techniques at your fingertips can help you understand your students’ progress at different points in the teaching cycle. You can then tweak your instruction to ensure you’re addressing misconceptions and stretching students where needed.
These assessments can range from quick checks for understanding to more in-depth activities, including the use of digital tools that make assessment more engaging. As a next step, you could explore further formative assessment techniques and ways to assess critical thinking so you can ensure your students are building 21st-century skills.
FAQs
What is a classroom assessment technique?
Classroom assessment techniques give you methods to assess students’ progress within your classroom setting. These can range from short solo or paired activities, like peer assessment, to more developed digital tests such as simulations.
What is an effective classroom assessment technique?
An effective classroom assessment technique should allow students to demonstrate their knowledge, understanding, and skills in the classroom context, with the opportunity to receive feedback on how to improve. It should be simple enough to deliver within a lesson and allow pupils to show what they can do in a low-stakes environment.
