Between the IEP goals, behavior plans, and those random lessons I had to teach on coding at my school, I barely had time for assessments. Assessments are crucial to document progress, track trends, and determine new skills to work on, but teachers are given no time to facilitate assessments for IEPS in their classrooms. Somehow, you need to be a magician and make the time in your already overpacked schedule.
I wish I had a solution that would reduce your assessments to a quick 15 minutes. That would be the dream. I don’t have that but I do have 5 tips that can help make assessments a bit smoother in your classroom. Let’s dive in!
Tip 1
Look at previous progress and determine what to assess. I was awful at not looking at the student’s VB-MAPP score until I was sitting down to assess again. I wasted so much time looking at the score sheet, looking it up in the instruction booklet, and trying to decipher what to test. The student would lose interest, I would run out of time and the entire assessment chuck would be gone.
I started preparing the assessment ahead of time. I would compare the scorecard to the book and list out everything I needed to test. I would pinpoint what I wanted to test and phrase it in a way to make it easy for me to remember while completing the assessment.
Tip 2
Format a way to quickly record the testing results. A lot of assessment tools have a grid to track progress. It is a great visual reference to monitor progress. The problem is it can be a bit more time-consuming to color in the correct box. An extra 20 seconds might not sound like a lot but it takes half of that time for your student to lose interest and leave the assessment area.
I now record all of my assessment results in my notes app or a google doc. I have all of the strands I want to test written out and I quickly jot down the score when I assessed the student. You can totally do this with paper and pencil, but I would always lose the paper. Having it digitally was key for me. I would record the scores and transfer them to the grid when I had more time.
Tip 3
Plan out any questions you need to ask. Again, this might sound silly but you would be surprised how hard it is to come up with the targets in a time crunch situation. Need to test motor actions? List our motor actions so you can quickly refer to them. Assessing -wh questions? Have who, what, where, and when questions already written so you can quickly fly through them. Want this printable? It’s in the free resource library!
Tip 4
Collect any hands-on materials. This was another big downfall of mine. Since I wasn’t looking at the assessment ahead of time, I didn’t really realize that I needed to have the student stack 3 blocks for one of the assessments. I would read that and have to leave the table to get blocks. Well if I was leaving the table, my student was definitely leaving the table. I would then spend the rest of the assessment block coaxing the student back to the table and end up wasting the time. By making the list in step 1, I knew what materials I needed. I could pull all of those to the table and have them ready for the assessment.
Tip 4
Organize any flashcards or similar items. For example, if you need to assess a student’s ability to sort based on class and you plan to use language builder cards, pull the cards you are going to give the student to sort. This will help cut out time and allow you to get directly to the assessment.
Bonus Tip
The bonus tip is a little extra type A but I had to throw it in there. Wrap cards together with a rubber band or a clip. Label materials. Flag pages in the assessment booklet. Have post-it notes reminding you what each material is aligned to. This can help streamline the assessment progress even more!
Let’s recap the steps-hopefully one of the tips help!
