How to Keep Kids Engaged While You Are Assessing

It’s the beginning of the school year, time to teach, right?  Wrong!  For many teachers the beginning of the year means sitting down with each student and assessing them to build their base line for those data walls.  While studies show that assessments shouldn’t be done until 3 - 6 weeks into the school year, when students have regained whatever they lost during the “summer slide”, we all know that many administrator want these assessments need to be done by the 10th day of school. 

Often we need to start assessing before we have even finished teaching procedures and routines, which means that the students who are not being assessed end up working on busy work in order to keep the class calm and quiet while we are assessing.  So, how do we keep the other student engaged AND have a class that is quiet enough to do a quality assessment?  Here are some ideas:

  1.  Whole class learning videos with graphic organizers – You know what science and social studies topics are coming up, start building up your students’ back ground knowledge by putting on a learning video about an upcoming topic.  While students are watching, ask them to complete a graphic organizer – to keep them focused and quiet.  You will get the ability to pull students one at a time for assessments, then when you start teaching this topic, students will have some background knowledge on the topic and you can show the video again, stopping to explain where necessary, without kids whining about wanting to see the end.

2.  Autobiographies  - Have students write an illustrated version of their life story.  Tell them that spelling and grammar doesn’t matter – just try their best, but that you are looking to get to know as much as you can about them. This will make a great beginning of the year writing assessment, as well as a piece of writing that you can later use to help students practice revising and editing.  Plus, you will get lots of information about your students that can help you form relationships and build in student led differentiation.

3.  Board Games – You know all those games that you never get to pull out?  Now’s the time to pull them out and teach kids how to play them.  Take a minute to go over the rules of each game before you have kids play them, and then split them into groups to play games like Scrabble, Dominoes, Yahtzee and Battleship.  Students will work on cooperation and problem solving while you get your assessments done.  Extra bonus - later on in the year you can pull out these games for early finishers or to reuse with academic rules.  

4.  Math Projects to Review last year’s skills – Have students work on real life math projects – like my Ice Cream Shop project or Designing a Dream School.  Choose a project that is just below your instructional level, so that they can do the entire project independently, building confidence and reviewing key math skills, while not boring students so that they get distracted.

5.  Reference book scavenger hunt – Split kids into groups and have students to find information with the reference books in your classroom or library.  Ask students to find the meaning of key vocabulary words using the dictionary, synonyms and antonyms using a thesaurus, bordering countries or states using the atlas and fun facts using the encyclopedia.  The group that finds the most items wins a small prize (like a no homework pass), and the quietest group gets 10 extra points.  This gets kids looking through reference materials they forget about, working with each other and you can pull kids one at a time for assessments.

6.  Puzzles – Jigsaw and self correcting – Puzzles build critical thinking and problem solving skills.  Having students work on any type of jigsaw or self correcting puzzle will get students using their noggen and staying focused, and hopefully quiet, while you are assessing.

7.  Let the Kids be the experts – Most kids think that they are experts at something.  While you are assessing, tell students that they will be teaching the class about something they are an expert at (can be anything, video games, dinosaurs, making a peanut butter sandwich, whatever!) and this is their time to create their lesson plans.  When all of the assessments are done, take a day or two and let each kid teach the lesson they created.  The kids will get a chance to be the teacher – every students’ dream, you will find out what kids are interested in and what they already know about, and how they are at public speaking.  But best of all, students will be so busy planning their lesson, that they won’t have time to interrupt you while you are assessing their classmates.  

8.  Read & Review Classroom Library Books – Give students time to read several books from the class or school library.  After students have read a book, let them rate and critique the books with my Book Review Bookmarks.  Hang the bookmarks around the library so that students can make an “informed decision” the next time they choose a book.

9.  Explore apps or websites to be used during the school year – All year long, we are in a rush for students to use this technology or that one for a specific project, but students rarely get a chance to just “fiddle around” with apps and websites.  However, children (and adults for that matter) often find that they learn more about how to properly use an app or website by “fiddling with it”, so take this time to let students play around with apps and websites you’ll use later in the year.  Students will be excited to “play on the computer” while you know they are really building background knowledge that will be used in future assignments.  For more information on what apps or websites to use – check out my blog post –Technology Accounts to Create for Your Classroom.

10.  Fast fact practice – Two months off means most students have forgotten their math facts – well not forgotten, but they certainly aren’t as fast as they were in May.  Use this time to let students practice their math facts with dice and card games, or laminate math fact quizzes and let them use a dry erase marker to race each other or a timer.

How do you keep the other students engaged while you complete your assessments?