We need assessments. That’s how you will know if your students have learned the material or not. Then that guides you into how to reteach or enrich the material in different ways, over time. Then you will reassess them as many times as it takes for them to show that they understand the lessons and know the content.
Teachers typically administer formative assessments after teaching a concept, to see how well students learned the material. At the end of a unit, teachers administer summative assessments, to see where the holes are and as part of grading.
As a homeschool teacher, you might have assessments included in the curriculum you purchase. But what if assessments are not included? Or what if you are creating your own curriculum and need to assess learning? Or what if you just need more fine-tuned assessments than you were given? You can make your own! It’s not that hard, really.
To create an assessment, start with the Standards, whether it’s Common Core or from your State. Your State Standards are available online, through a search. The link for Common Core ELA and Math Standards is here:
It’s good to print them for your child’s grade and keep them for reference. Modern curricula is based upon these standards, but I have found the older, pre-CCS dated curricula does not rely upon them and things can be missing. In that case, when I was teaching from an older curriculum, I supplemented it with my own materials that covered the newer standards.
There are several ways to assess a child’s learning.
- Observation: give your child a task or observe them doing a task on their own. Take quick notes on how they do, what was correct, or what they might have missed.
- Checklist: A list of standards with boxes you can check as they are met, or you can highlight the items. I used to use a different color highlighter for each quarter, so I could see when each student learned what.
- Rubric: create a chart that outlines the task, with boxes that have details about proficiency, from left to right or top to bottom, basic to exceptional proficiency, usually 3-4 gradations. Highlight the box that best describes how well the child does. Generally, these will be graded “exceeded, met, developing, and unmet.” A refusal would be categorized as “unmet.” This works well for writing.
- Oral quiz: ask the child to tell you an answer to a question or to describe how to do something. This can include flash cards or having them show you something like a space between words or a punctuation mark. This is graded on how many correct answers they give.
- Paper quiz/test: Questions the child can answer by filling in the correct bubble, writing the correct word, matching items from two columns, circling the correct answer, doing equations, spelling tests, writing tests, and so on. You grade based upon number of correct responses.
- Worksheets: They do not actually teach anything; they provide skills practice and can work well as assessments.
- Essays, short stories, projects: Use rubrics to grade these.
- Running Records are special reading passages that calculate how many words are read in a specific amount of time.
The Standard provides your goal; it tells you what to test the student on. Then you devise the best type of quiz, test, or activity for assessment. There are online grade calculators if you search for them. That will give a percentage and a letter grade. Keep a gradebook, whether you are using a purchased curriculum or devising your own.
Assessment Examples
Example: If a preschooler or kindergartener is learning letter names, show them letter cards and make a pile of correct answers next to them, and keep wrong responses next to you. Then on a recording sheet with all the letters on it; highlight the correct answers. Keep teaching and assessing the others. To grade this, you would calculate the percentage of correct answers from those offered and establish a grade. Example: If a 2nd grader is learning about a math concept, you can ask him or her to do it on the white board while you watch, then you can mark your grade book if they succeed.
Example: Observe a kindergartener as they create a specific pattern and make note of what they do on a Post-it note. Transfer it to the grade book.
Example: Ask the student to explain something verbally. Use a rubric to document their connections and level of detail. You could also just use a checklist to say they hit the major point.
Example: Ask a student to show you how they did something, and note your observations.
Example: To check reading fluency, create a rubric with checkboxes for skipping words, adding words, decoding words, and number of correct words out of possible words.
Example: To check a 3rd grader on addition automaticity, you can make a page of equations and see how many they do correctly in 3 minutes, and put the percentage into your grade book.
These are just examples, but as you learn how to do this and get used to it, it can be fun! It will give you valuable data about how well your student is learning and direction to go for supporting them in filling in missing knowledge.
The Standard is the end goal. You are creating an assessment to see how well they accomplished that goal. You teach it, then assess it, and then grade it. If it didn’t yield good results, reteach and retest until it does. Keep in mind that each child is developmentally ready for each task, on their own time frame. What one child can do in September easily, another might not be ready for until spring. Just keep reintroducing concepts so that when they are ready, they will have the opportunity to learn them.
Editorial Comments on Common Core and Standardized Testing
(Or, one more reason for Homeschooling)
My main complaint about Common Core is the testing culture it has created, and that kids are expected to do well on these tests that are not well designed, are boring, and that do not always yield accurate results. Because teachers can be rewarded or punished, based on their class test results, it puts pressure on them to tailor their instruction to passing tests, rather than learning content.
Common Core and the “No Child Left Behind” movement spawned an industry of standardized testing. The tests are produced by corporations and cost districts a great deal of money that would be better spent paying teachers more and reducing class sizes. The corporations have a profit motive that makes them revamp and expand testing each year. Now it is common for schools to abandon classroom instruction for the month of April, to force students into intensive testing. Teachers are encouraged to “teach to the test,” instead of providing well-rounded instruction over multiple content areas. Many students are struggling to read or do math, and the hours of testing take away from their remediation. Testing also triggers anxiety in some students, and it also tests their ability to read an elaborate question or operate a computer, rather than their content knowledge.
Good teachers can tell you where every student stands, in every content area, and where they need support. They design supports and remediation based upon their classroom data. This is how teachers used to teach and grade and it worked well for centuries. Notice that kids are less educated, than before widespread standardized tests intruded into education.