Literacy Assessment

Literacy assessment can get overwhelming fast. How do you assess what you need to assess? Where’s that sweet spot between authentic work and easy to grade?

Literacy Performance Assessment

My favorite literacy performance assessments are portfolios and discussions. They help me see students’s depth of knowledge, but they are also real. Use portfolios at regular intervals throughout the school year for students to stop and reflect on their growth as readers and writers. The school year is a climb! Stopping to look back helps them see how far they’ve come. Discussions are great for giving students ownership of class topics and synthesizing content with their lives.

Other Literacy Assessment Examples

Don’t forget about formative assessment! Not everything has to end up in the gradebook to be an assessment. With writing, formative assessment is much more powerful. By the time students get their final grades, they are over it! By getting more detailed in formative assessments when they can immediately apply the feedback to their writing, there will be a higher likelihood of application. Formative assessment also helps with vocabulary strategies beyond the right/wrong of vocabulary knowledge. Helping students know how and when to apply vocabulary strategies is an ongoing process.

Finding the Balance with Literacy Assessments

Revisit these products throughout the year to help your students learn from and track their own growth in reading, writing, vocabulary, and discussion. The real difference is in choosing the bundle for your grade-level band. Too many products are too general to be helpful! I have a literacy assessment bundle for grades 9-12 and a literacy assessment bundle for grades 7-8.