What are Some Informal Assessment Tools?

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Answer

Some informal assessment tools include:

• Anecdotal notations: The quick, jotting down of ideas that teachers do.
• Narratives or daily records: Often, this will be when teachers gather an ongoing, lengthier picture of what happened during an activity or during a part of the day.
• Daily health checks: Check-ins that teachers do with children when they first come to school to capture how the child is feeling.
• Teacher observation notes: This can be a more in-depth look at what's going on in the classroom. These notes can be in the form of checklists, notations, or documented in a variety of different ways.
• Frequency counts and time samples: This is a great way to find out what's happening at different periods throughout the day. Frequency counts and time samples often work well with targeted behaviors or targeted skills. If you have a child who has significant issues with behavior, this is a great tool to figure out how often that behavior is happening and at what times of the day. You'll also hear about functional behavioral assessment, where you analyze the antecedent, or what occurred before the child had the behavior, what the behavior was, and then the consequence, or what happened after the behavior.
• Interviews, conversations, or correspondence: People don't often think of these things as data, but they are helpful in capturing what's going on in that classroom. I highly recommend making sure that interviewing and having conversations is a critical component of the assessments that you conduct.

This Ask the Expert is an edited excerpt from the course, Screening, Evaluation, and Assessment: A Guide for Administrators, by Amanda Schwartz, PhD.