Assessment Folder

Hello friends,

Right before school began, I blogged about this assessment folder that I was going to implement this school year. 

I have linked with The Elementary Entourage to share tips and tricks to keep our sanity and be organized!

Four months into the school year and I find this method to be very easy to use and simple. I do not need to have tons of booklets with me when assessing my students. It has also become very easy to use for my assistant - if she is not sure the skill (or measure) the activity is assessing, she can easily go to teh reference page on the back.

This past year I tried several methods to collect my data. I tried sticky notes, a notebook for notes, pictures (which was very helpful.....most of the time ;)) and the worst for me was anecdotal notes on sheets of papers - which I would misplace and had to hunt them all over the classroom.

This week I found this amazing post on Thank God it's First Grade, where she talks about the method she uses for conferencing. It reminded me when I was doing my student teaching internship, my mentor teacher used a similar method as well. She used it for book and writing conferencing too. 

Well, I think this may be the solution for my data collection dilemma. This is what I am going to use:

To create these data collection folders you'll need, folders, tape, index cards and markers. I intend to use a different colored binder for each assessment period/quarters. 

I used the inside of the folders to place my index cards. I taped the bottom card first and lastly the top one. On the left side I added a label with the area to be assessed.
Note the colors next to the students' names. Each student on each small group will have a color to easier identify and find the card to be used.
The front and the back of the cards can be used for each student - I will write the date and the observation right next to it.

If the index card is full, I can easily detach it from the folder, place it in the student folder and replace it with a new one!

This is the back side. I included an overview of the entire assessment we used in the classroom. Color-coded of course!

TIP: Laminate each folder before you place the index cards. It will last longer and your front and back cover will remain intact!

It gotta be cute right?!  These beautiful graphics are from Creative Clipart by Krista Wallden.

You can download these cute covers for your different groups {{HERE}}

Keep learning...and assessing!