6 Alternative Assessments for Students with Special Needs

Just as modifying the curriculum and your teaching methods helps students with special needs better learn the 5 paragraph essay outline, providing alternative assessments allow students to demonstrate their knowledge in more effective ways. Tests can be difficult for students with disabilities for a number of reasons, including difficulty organizing, reading struggles, and trouble concentrating. These alternatives give you the opportunity to assess what your students have learned without a standard test.

1. Portfolios
   Throughout a unit, have your students keep a binder with all of their assignments. At the end of the unit, instruct them to go through their binders, choose the items that best showcase what they have learned, and remove the rest. Give your students sticky notes so they can post short explanations of why different parts of each assignment were chosen.

2. Visual Representations
   Have your students make visual representations of what they have learned. There are several possibilities for this assessment, including posters, dioramas, and sculptures. Students can include a note about their visuals or explain them verbally.

3. Oral Reports
   Instruct your students to prepare a speech or oral essay on a topic they've recently learned. Some students who struggle with written assignments have an easier time organizing information they share orally, so grade your students only on their oral reports and not the written work.

4. Dramatic Presentations
   There are several different ways your students can perform to showcase what they have learned. For example, place your students into small groups and have them perform a skit or song, separate your students into teams and have them debate topics relevant to the lesson, or pretend you're hosting a talk show and interview students as your guests.

5. Videos
   Have your students create videos that incorporate what they've learned. Just a few possibilities for their videos include documentaries, interviews, dramatic scenes, and commercials.

6. Games
   Instruct your students to create a game that includes important information from their lessons. Some examples of games are crossword puzzles for history lessons, trivia games for science, or dice games for math.

The goal of an assessment is to determine what your students have learned. Tests are not always an efficient way of making that determination. Giving your students a variety of options for demonstrating their knowledge and understanding will ensure you are truly grading them on what they have learned and not how well they can test.