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Ideally, assessments are a form of communication between teachers and their students. They let students know what the teachers expect them to have learned, and their results let teachers know how effective their instruction was. But anyone who’s ever handed out a stack of tests (and then graded those tests) knows that test anxiety, reading struggles, and other factors can affect this line of communication.

So how can you assess students without tests or quizzes? We’ve collected our favorite assessment strategies for all grades, including quick checks for understanding, enjoyable final assessment projects, and detailed methods for tracking student success, along with exemplary no-prep resources that include everything you need to communicate with your students.

What makes an assessment effective?

Not all assessment strategies are equally helpful. The best assessment strategies in the classroom of any grade level use these techniques to ensure they’re interesting and effective to as many students as possible.

High-quality, effective assessments:

• Address a variety of learning styles, including visual learners, auditory learners, and kinesthetic learners
• Include both formative assessments (assessments for learning) and summative assessments (assessments of learning) at different points in the grading period
• Provide relevant information and connect to select demonstrable skills
• Inspire a culture of inquiry-based learning and intellectual curiosity for both teachers and students

In addition, effective assessment strategies are woven throughout the lesson planning process as logical checkpoints and benchmarks to check for successful instruction and student acquisition of skills. Strong units start with the assessment in mind, and work backward to find the best ways to teach those needed skills.

Quick and Engaging Checks for Understanding

Formative assessments don’t need to be long to be effective. In fact, they don’t even need to be on paper! Use these quick assessment strategies that check students’ understanding, enabling you to move to the next part of your instruction and build a successful classroom culture.

Entrance and exit tickets

One of the most common forms of checking for understanding is the classic entrance and exit tickets. Filling out paper or digital entrance tickets is a good way to check what students remember from the day before, while exit tickets let you know if they’ve picked up what you’ve been working on today. Consider giving out links to digital polls for students to answer basic questions about the day’s instruction!

Exit Slips and Entrance Tickets
By Brain Wrinkles
Grades: 5th-9th

Keep instruction going all the way to the bell. Students can fill in a thought bubble about the most important things they learned that day, create a fake “tweet” about their lesson, make a note to themselves about the main points of the day, and more with a series of ready-to-print worksheets and graphic organizers.

Thumbs up/down

Ideal for kinesthetic learners or students working on their literacy skills, a simple request for a thumbs up or thumbs down can be enough to show you whether they’ve grasped the concept you’re presenting. 

Prepare them for this assessment strategy at the beginning of the school year by practicing with more basic ideas, and letting students know that a thumbs up means “I get it and am comfortable with moving on,” and a thumbs down means “I don’t really get it and need more explanation.”

Drawing the concept

For students who prefer art to more standard forms of assessment, a short drawing can be an excellent way for them to demonstrate their understanding. This assessment technique works for social studies, science, math, ELA, or any other subject that students can illustrate on paper. They can draw out short comic strips to show a series of events, a larger drawing with labels or speech bubbles, or a quick sketch that serves as an exit ticket for your lesson.

Six-word story

Want a formative assessment that challenges and engages your students? Try a six-word story assessment, which encourages learners to summarize what they’ve learned in only six words. 

Beginning readers or English learners can list six individual words or concepts (such as “Revolutionary War, George Washington, Benedict Arnold”), while advanced students can try to create one sentence that summarizes it all (“Arnold betrays while Washington keeps fighting”).

Rate your understanding

Check for a more nuanced sense of understanding with a rating system that students already know well. They can hold up fingers or write a number on individual whiteboards to show that they totally understand what you’re talking about (4-5), they sort of get what you mean but need a little more help (2-3), or that they are totally lost (1). Consider creating a classroom poster that reminds students what each number means, so they can reference it quickly when you ask for a rating.

Summative Assessment Strategies for Long-Term Learning

It’s true that certain types of assessments can be good for students, but those types don’t tend to be very long multiple-choice assessments. Other assessment strategies in the classroom can show you a lot more about a student than their current skill levels, such as their creativity or interests outside of school. 

Find inspiration in these summative assessment and project ideas that allow students to demonstrate understanding over a longer period of instruction. You can assign one to the entire class, or let students choose their favorite forms of assessment expression!

Become the teacher

Take the day off and let students teach for a change! In reality, a summative assessment that lets students plan a lesson around a skill or concept they’ve learned can show you quite a bit about their level of mastery. 

Let them design worksheets, plan a lecture, and even create their own quizzes for them to assess their “students!” For struggling learners or those still working on proficiency in the chosen skill, consider letting groups present their lessons rather than individuals.

Skill portfolios

Writers, artists, and musicians create portfolios of work to show their range of abilities and development. Let your students do the same with a specific unit, skill, or concept, and have them include various pieces of evidence that show how much they’ve grown throughout the grading period. Advanced students may need less guidance on what to include, while younger learners and struggling readers could use a more scaffolded approach.

Kindergarten Portfolio Student Data Assessments Report Cards Preschool TK
By Michelle Griffo from Apples and ABC’s
Grades: PreK-1st
Subject: ELA
Standards: CCSS K.CC.A.1, A.2, A.3

This kindergarten portfolio resource helps you track students’ writing progress all year! Each month, there are 21 printables to pick from. Those 21 printables repeat each month, so you can showcase and visually see their growth over time. Each skill has the option to trace or write, so you can switch out the printables as the students are improving in each area.

Create a podcast or video

A generation ago, creating a talk show was a really fun way for students to demonstrate understanding, but today’s students may not know what a talk show is! Update this classic project for the 21st century with podcasts or videos for digital-friendly students. They can invite “guests” to interview about a concept, or they can create a trailer for an upcoming “movie” about what they’ve learned during this unit. (Coming soon: “The Pythagorean Theorem!”)

Museum of excellence

Take the gallery walk to a new level with a museum of excellence. Students create artifacts that demonstrate their understanding of a concept or a specific part of that concept, such as literature in ancient Greece or covalent bonds in chemistry. They can choose creative ways to show what they’ve learned, including dioramas, robotics, or larger-scale art projects, or they can follow a more structured visual aid prompt to help them through the process. 

Write a song

Musically inclined students find a moment to shine with a creative assessment project. Using a well-known song as a starting point, learners can change the lyrics to reflect the concept you’ve taught. 

For example, “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” may become “Name It, Name It, Proper Noun.” Encourage more advanced students to choose more complex songs or concepts, while struggling students can choose nursery rhymes to cover a more general level of knowledge. 

Successful Self-Reflection Assessment Strategies

If you’d really like to know how well your instruction is landing with students, why not ask the students themselves? Self-reflection is an assessment strategy that’s growing in popularity in 21st-century classrooms, both because it involves students in their own learning and because it fosters an important growth mindset in your classroom community.

Host self-evaluation conferences with students

There’s no better evidence of your teaching success than a student telling you or their parents (or both) about what they’ve learned so far. Use self-evaluation conferences to encourage students to think about their achievements, areas of growth, and proximity to goals they’ve set earlier in the year. You can have one-on-one conferences with each student, or you can invite students to participate in parent conferences for a twist on the traditional format.

Student Self Reflection Assessment Form – Self Evaluation Conference Form
By Lucky in Primary
Grades: 3rd-6th

Sometimes your student is the best person to report on their own progress. Train elementary students to reflect on their learning experience with a checklist on citizenship and character skills, along with a version for students to fill in their own goals.

Have peer interviews

If your students love to chat with each other, channel that social energy into an assessment where they reflect on their own learning over a certain period of time. Peers should prepare questions to ask their partners about what they’ve learned, what the biggest challenges were, and what they’d do differently next time. Consider expanding the project into interviews in front of the class or videoing them to edit later.

Create a soundtrack for your learning journey

For those students who are always wearing earbuds to class (even though you always spot them under their hoodie), this assessment may be their dream project. Have them create a playlist that reflects their learning journey so far, including popular songs with themes that match their level of reflection. They can also write an explanation of each song’s presence in the playlist, as well as what they learned in each stage of their journey.

Keep a progress journal

What skills are most important for your students to learn this year? Have them keep track of their growth in desired skills with a written journal that reflects on how well their learning is going. You can periodically add these journal prompts to your daily writing schedule, or you can let students write a more thorough self-reflection essay that really considers the ways they’ve grown in knowledge and understanding over the past grading period.

Write a letter to yourself

There’s no better mentor for your students than themselves in the future. Encourage students to think about where they were at the beginning of the unit, grading period, or school year, and to write a letter to themselves reflecting on what they’ve learned and the most valuable parts of the instructional experience. 

Bookend the assignment with another letter written at the beginning of the year, where students can ask questions to their future selves (such as “Will I ever understand multiplication?” or “Was the Cold War really that big of a deal?”)

Resources to Easily Track Progress

Now that you’ve got some assessment strategies to choose from, it’s time to compile that data! Use these helpful resources to track student progress and skill mastery over a period of time, and come up with reports that make their areas of success and growth crystal clear to you, parents, and the students themselves.

Weekly Progress Report Templates for Elementary Students
By This Little Reader
Grades: K-5th

Why wait until the grading period ends to let students and parents know how class is going? Use an editable progress report template to issue progress in shorter periods than an entire grading period, such as weekly or biweekly, and to send positive notes home to parents about student success.

Student Data Tracker – Intervention & Assessment Trackers – Small Group Data
By Rachel Vincent
Subjects: Math, Reading

Whether you’re preparing for an upcoming IEP or tracking student progress for parent conferences, this editable data tracker resource is a helpful way to compile and compare student data. A collection of tracking sheets includes teacher observations, student data, IEP overview pages, an RTI planning page, and much more.

Pie/Doughnut Chart Formative Assessment Mastery Tracker – EDITABLE!
By Track Like a Boss
Subject: Math, ELA, Science

Show the results of your formative assessments quickly with an easy-to-read pie or doughnut chart resource. Applicable to any grade or subject, this mastery tracker is a valuable part of your upcoming parent conferences, making it easy to show student success on a classroom device with just a few data points and assessment scores.

Make assessments helpful, valuable, and fun

As you plan new assessment strategies for the upcoming unit or school year, choose creative and engaging ways to check for understanding over mundane quizzes and tests. From quick formative assessments to larger unit projects, these assessment ideas can work for students of all ages. And if your student assessments are interesting enough for students, they’ll be more likely to demonstrate their true understanding.