A three-part assessment promotes reading comprehension skills. Class members read literary texts and take notes to discuss their findings, answer comprehension questions, write summaries, and complete charts. 

Not one but two box plots. How will your pupils fare? Assess their understanding of box plots by having them compare two populations. The eighth of nine installments in the Gr. 7 Claim 1 Item Slide Shows series, the resource has...

Build the model right out of the box. A few sample items show teachers how Smarter Balanced assessments may approach Claim 4, modeling and data analysis. Pupils use their skills to create equations or expressions to model the situation...

Assign an interactive poster activity to assess your class's knowledge and skill concerning data analysis. The teacher reference provides solid questions to ask individuals or groups as they complete their posters.

Romeo and Juliet, Act 5, Scene 3, lines 139-170, is the focus of this day's lesson plan. Readers examine the dramatic irony in Juliet's comments and consider how "lamentable chance" caused by a "greater power" plays a role in the tragedy.

An assessment challenges scholars to read an informative text then respond with an explanatory essay. The exam begins as participants read a text passage twice then take notes, making sure to jot down key details. Following the...

Finish a unit on Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea with a narrative essay. Based on Santiago's harrowing adventures, the essay prompts readers to think about a time when they were faced with a challenge, overcame a...

Why are only four colors needed to color webs from regular pentagons, not five? An assessment task requires young mathematicians to first construct regular pentagons using a compass and straightedge, then has them consider a shape...

The fabulous four. Scholars learn the four key components for creating an excellent journal entry. They then work to create a journal entry rubric and participate in a mini lesson about organizing and outlining journal entries. 

Monitor the growth of young mathematicians with a comprehensive addition and subtraction assessment. Using the context of a class field trip to an apple orchard, this series of four story problems allows children to demonstrate their...

Evaluate young mathematicians' understanding of area and perimeter with this series of three assessment tasks. Challenging students to not only calculate the area and perimeter of irregular shapes, but to explain in writing their...

As a middle school assessment task, learners first examine line graphs of monthly temperatures for two locations, and then match box plots to each line plot.

If you're not right-handed, are you wrong-handed? Young statisticians calculate the percentage of left-handed people using a given data set in the assessment task. They plot data on a scatter plot and consider how the line of best fit...

Why was Pythagoras so obsessed with squares? The assessment task posits the question of whether the geometric interpretation of the Pythagorean Theorem holds for figures other than squares. Scholars first consider the case of semicircles...

A revolutionary work of literature requires a revolutionary assessment project. A series of activities on Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings includes discussion questions, a plot synopsis, and a selection of both short...

Young composers demonstrate their understanding of the stylistic features of descriptive music, including pitch, tempo, dynamics, rhythm, and timbre, by developing a melody and countermelody for a main character in a story. As part of...

How much can a cat eat? The five-question fraction assessment asks pupils to determine the fractional portion of a food box eaten by cats. Learners show their proficiency in adding and subtracting fractions using several scenarios...

Make the cookies healthy. The assessment task asks pupils to determine the number of cookies they could make based on a given amount of ingredients. Given two sugar substitutes, learners determine which substitute would be better and...

It all adds up to one. Pupils solve several items that involve finding sums of fractions in relationship to a whole. The assessment task uses fractions with unlike denominators to determine the amount of a tank of gas and the amount of...

Here you'll find a great sampling of practice standardized test questions organized into four sections: ELA, mathematics, social studies, and science. Help your learners become familiar with the types of multiple-choice questions...

Young scientists compile everything they have learned into a report in the fifth and final lesson in a unit on the visible light spectrum. Access to photos from observatories, telescopes, and satellites allows learners to compare...

Traditional calculus problem made simple. In the high school assessment task, learners determine the minimum surface area for a can of a given volume using algebraic and numerical methods to solve the problem. No calculus...

One block, two blocks, white blocks, gray blocks. In the high school assessment task, learners investigate patterns of sidewalk stones to develop a quadratic expression for each colored block. Young mathematicians then use the expression...

Circles, and triangles, and tangents, oh my! In the assessment task, learners first answer questions leading to the radius of an inscribed circle for a given right triangle. They then use the result to independently determine the...