At the end of each unit is the End-of-Unit Assessment. These assessments gauge students’ understanding of the key concepts of the unit while also preparing students for standardized exams. Problem types include multiple choice, multiple response, short answer, restricted constructed response, and extended response. Problems vary in difficulty and depth of knowledge.

Grade these assessments in a standardized fashion, or grade more formatively by asking students to show and explain their work on all problems. If making changes to customize the assessments, keep the format of the provided problem types and include problems of different types and levels of difficulty.

All summative-assessment problems include a complete solution and standards alignment. Multiple-choice and multiple-response problems often include a reason for each potential error that a student might make. Unlike formative assessments, problems on summative assessments generally do not prescribe a method of solution.

Students should get the correct answer on assessment problems for the right reasons, and they should get incorrect answers for the right reasons. To help with this, Imagine IM assessment problems are targeted and short, use consistent, positive wording, and have clear, undebatable correct responses.

Multiple-choice problems test students’ proficiency in a specific skill. Their distractors are common errors and misconceptions directly related to the assessed content. Serving a diagnostic function, the distractors quickly reveal the most common errors that students make. There are no “trick” questions, and in earlier grades, students are told how many answers to select on multipleselect problems.

When a multiple-response prompt does not give the number of correct responses, it always includes the phrase “select all” to clearly indicate their type. Each part of a multiple-response problem addresses a different piece of the same overall skill, again serving as a diagnostic tool for understanding students’ common errors.

Short-answer, restricted constructed-response, and extended-response problems are carefully designed to avoid the “double whammy” effect, when a part of the problem asks for students to use correct work from a previous part. This ensures that students have all possible opportunities to show proficiency on assessments.

When possible, extended-response problems offer multiple ways for students to demonstrate understanding of the assessed content, through some combination of words, diagrams, and equations.

How do you assess progress?