When it comes to creating classroom assessments, educators have a lot of leeway as to form, content, and length. Sometimes, the breadth available can be a little overwhelming. If you’re stalling when it comes time to draw up evaluations for your students – don’t fear! We’ve got a set of handy guides to help you get your assessment-brain inspired!

Rubric 1 – Seven Forms of Assessment:

1. Forced Choice

• Multiple choice, matching, true/false, fill-in-the-blank
• Can be scored objectively
• Most common form of assessment
• Choose from among alternatives given

2. Essay

• Good for assessing thinking, reasoning, and expression skills
• Opportunity to demonstrate knowledge of relationships
• Gives information on how students process knowledge
• Scoring can be subjective

3. Short Written Responses

• Mini-essays
• Brief explanations of information or processes
• Scoring more objective than for essays

4. Oral Reports

• Assess student speaking ability
• Similar to essay but more impromptu
• Require acute listening skills to score

5. Teacher Observation

• Informal
• Best for process-oriented and non achievement factors
• Good when linked to interview
• Teacher notes used to record observation results

6. Student Self-Assessment

• Most underused form of assessment
• Helps develop higher-order metacognitive skills
• Assessment conference allows student to clarify own level of learning

7. Performance Tasks

• Require student to construct responses, apply knowledge
• Require more than recall of information
• Can assess a variety of forms of knowledge and skills
• Scoring dependent on task
• Rubric 2 – Examples of the Types of Questions that Encourage Students to Show Different Ways of Knowing:

1. Analysis Questions

What are the key parts?
Which parts are essential and why?

2. Comparison Questions

How are these alike?
What specific characteristics are similar?
How are these different?
In what way(s) are they different?

3. Connections/Clarification Questions

Into what groups could you organize these things?
What are the rules for membership in each group?
What are the defining characteristics of each group?

4. Constructing Support Questions

What data can you cite that support this conclusion?
What is an argument that would support this claim?

5. Deduction Questions

On the basis of this rule, what would you deduce?
What are the conditions that make this inevitable?

6. Inferring and Concluding Questions

On the basis of these data, what would you conclude?
How likely is it that this will occur?

7. Abstracting Questions

What pattern underlies all of these situations?
What are the essential characteristics of this thing?

8. Error Analysis

How is this conclusion misleading?
What does not match?

Rubric 3 – Types of Performance Assessment Tasks:

1. Learning logs and journals

What It Is:
Notes, drawings, data, charts, artwork, and other notes written by the student

Uses:
Encourages reflection as one is learning.
Provides a record of questions and thoughts.

Tips for the Teacher for Effective Use:
Generate questions for students to ponder and respond to.
Make the questions as varied as possible.

2. Folios and Portfolios

What It Is:
Folio is the storage bin, box, or file. Portfolio is the organization and presentation of selected folio artifacts for a particular purpose.

Uses:
Documents learning and growth over time.
Encourages self-assessment.
Shows student’s best work.

Tips for the Teacher for Effective Use:
Ask students to explain why they have included the various items.
Require entries to be tied to standards.
Provide feedback.
Discuss the portfolio with students and 
their parents.

3. Interviews

What It Is:
Peers and/or the teacher asking a set of questions.

Uses:
Helps determine what has been learned.

Tips for the Teacher for Effective Use:
Use a variety of question types to obtain a range of responses.

4. Observation with anecdotal record

What It Is:
Observing and note taking during day-to-day activities.

Uses:
Provides documentation of performance and learning over time.

Tips for the Teacher for Effective Use:
Conduct observations on a regular basis.
Write notes clearly and include specific 
descriptions of what was observed.
Review notes.
Distinguish carefully between facts and 
interpretations.

5. Student Products and Projects

What It Is:
Specific products such as lab reports, presentations, and digital productions.

Uses:
Provides cumulative evidence about the extent of learning.

Tips for the Teacher for Effective Use:
Display student work.

Next time you need to create an assessment but are coming up empty-handed, pull out one of these rubrics to help you think up the best test for your students! If you need more than just an outline to help you brush up on assessment creation, check out our full set of articles on what goes into classroom assessment and how you can make the most of your evaluations!