Five Unconventional Ways to Assess Student Learning

When we’re in the grind of teaching day after day, it can be easy to get stuck in ruts. Teach content, pass out workbooks, students complete worksheet page. There. Learning has happened.

And while there is certainly a place for “ordinary” ways of checking your students’ understanding (especially because it is the most time-efficient for you, the busy teacher), bored students are less likely to retain information. This can actually create more work for you in the long run.

Here are a few ways you could consider adding variety to the ways you check for student understanding. Ditch the workbook page for a day and try one of these methods instead.

Teach a peer

Make a list of several of the concepts taught in that day’s lesson. Put students in pairs and have them “teach” the concepts to each other. Encourage students to ask questions of their classmate who is explaining the content. This will encourage both the speaker and the listener to really engage in absorbing the content.

Write a song

Music is a fabulous way to help student’s brains to process information in a new context. Give students a list of several well-known songs, such as “Twinkle, Twinkle,” “Jesus Loves Me,” or “The Farmer in the Dell.” Have students take a concept they have learned and set it to music. This could be done individually, in pairs, or as a whole class.

Draw a picture

Give students a few moments to draw a picture of what they learned today. You could leave it very open-ended or specify a certain concept you want them to illustrate. After they’re finished, have them explain their picture, either in a written paragraph, or orally to a friend.

Sticky note stations

Print several comprehension questions on pieces of paper and hang them around the room. Give each student as many sticky notes as there are questions. Students should write their answers to the questions on the sticky notes and place them on the wall beside where the question is hanging. This is essentially the same thing as having them answer these questions in their workbooks but allows for physical movement and variety in a way that will make it feel fresh and interesting to your students.

Write a test

This activity will really force your students to think through the content they have learned. Have them write their own test questions. You could let each student make a test that another student then completes. Or, you could assign different students to write different types of questions (matching, multiple choice, true/false, etc.) and then put all the questions together to make one test that everyone completes on another day.

Students often enjoy getting to be on the “other side” of a test by writing the questions themselves. It’s especially fun for them if you can make a photocopy of the questions they have written and let them create an answer key (this has the additional bonus of making them really think through the content).

None of these methods require a lot of preparation or extra work for you as the teacher. And as long as students are learning and engaging with the information, you’ve accomplished the same thing that a worksheet does, but in a more interesting way.