Some ideas for ongoing assessment are outlined below. Message Board Direct students to this discussion forum as a way of gathering free-form feedback and comments. Or, start a Message Board thread yourself and ask students to respond to your question. The Teacher s Lounge section for the Message Board includes a rubric that may help you evaluate students Message Board participation and postings. The Kids Quiz is another feature that lends itself to ongoing assessment.
Students can take the randomly-generated quiz at any time, which provides a fun form of assessment.
To create a more rich ongoing assessment opportunity, encourage students to write questions for the Kids Quiz. By writing questions, a student must go through several very important steps in higher-order thinking. He or she must evaluate the information to determine what concept or fact is important enough to include in this assessment vehicle. The writing of the question itself and the accompanying explanation requires an understanding and appraisal of various options. Because the quiz questions also provide the opportunity to be published and credited on the site, motivation will increase and the assessment can become part of an engaging, creative, and rewarding game.