Assessment & Accommodation

Classroom  Read our suggestions for modifying assessments, and discover new techniques to improve your knowledge of your students. Also find practical accommodations that can be made in most classrooms. These practices will help you include all of your students in classroom discussion, a primary goal for successful teachers.

Assessment Accommodation

An overview of using authentic assessment to measure student abilities and progress.

A comprehensive listing of types of assessment accommodations.

Review effective assessment accommodations for special needs students.

Guiding principles for assessment accommodation.

Discover a glossary that will help you understand the words used concerning Assessment Accommodations.

Read these case studies to give you an idea about how some teachers modified assessments.

Use this sheet to outline a special needs student's accommodation plan.

Use this checklist to ensure appropriate assessment accommodations are used in test taking.

This pamphlet explains test-taking accommodations to the families of special needs students.

Give this pamphlet to Spanish speaking families to help them understand assessment accommodations.

This page outlines the legal requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

Alternative Assessment

Our extensive library of rubrics will help you assess your students' work in all subjects, from reading & language arts, to science, to social studies.

Find links to various articles and printables on journal writing, where students can keep a continual documentation of their expressions, feelings, and experiences. Journals are also an excellent form of non-traditional assessment.

 

This type of evaluation is a compilation of a student's work. It can be very helpful in describing efforts and successes in a particular area.

Assessment can be a tricky task. Our collection of ideas and forms will make it easier for you to evaluate and grade your students' work, no matter their grade level.

Resources on Assessment Accommodation by the Council for Exceptional Children

Making Assessment Accommodations: A Toolkit for Educators
Use as a training resource or for information sessions to learn about the accommodations useful to assist students through state and district wide assessments. The video features students in test settings, as well as teachers, parents, and administrators explaining what accommodations are available.

Standards Reference Master This CD-ROM features Standards and Benchmarks for 33 States and McREL's Content Knowledge. More than just a text browser, this powerful infoBASE allows you to personalize standards and benchmark content through program features such as creating shadow files, highlighting, full-text editing, and more.

Testing Students with Disabilities: Practical Strategies for Complying With District and State Requirements
Martha L. Thurlow, Judy L. Elliott, and James E. Ysseldyke
This guide explains how to decide which tests students with disabilities should take; what assessment accommodations are, their purpose, and who is eligible for them; how to ensure that any assessments used locally are comparable to state standards; and how to blend the assessment process with the student's IEP.

Teaching Test-taking Skills: Helping Students Show What They Know
Thomas E. Scruggs and Margo A. Mastropieri
Classroom teachers, resource teachers, and parents can help students "show what they know" by training them in test-taking skills. Not to be confused with teaching to the test, test-taking skills training involves teaching the student to deal with test format and his or her own approach to taking tests. This book gives strategies for taking both standardized and classroom tests, and presents a curriculum and sample lesson plans.


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