Student Created Task Cards for Assessment

So you have used an entire set of task cards, and your students did a wonderful job completing them. Now what!? Turn the tables on them and have your students create their own task cards as a quick little assessment!

This is a super basic idea, but it's very effective!  After your students complete a set of task cards on a topic, have them each create a few of their own task cards that could go in the set right along with the ones they already did.  This is a great way for students to show that they truly understand--or don't understand-- and can apply the concepts that they are working on.

When we did this for the first time, it was with my Spring Inference Riddle Task Cards.  I had a group of kids finish before the rest of the students, and in a moment of quick thinking, I asked them to make their own cards to go with the set.  Their eyes lit up. "Can we DECORATE them, too!?" they asked me.  "Oh! And will you LAMINATE them!?" I thought they were going to explode with excitement when I pulled out the card stock and let them get to work.  They loved creating them, and I realized what a great assessment it was!  Were these kids REALLY understanding the work, or were they just going through the motions and getting it done?  If they could create their own versions of the cards, then I would consider that near mastery of the topic!

Here is a picture of the original task cards they had been working on...

And here are a few of the student-created cards they made...

Yes, this 5th grader had an Elvis themed birthday party! :)

Eventually, all of the kids got to create their own cards since I ended up using it as an assessment grade.  When we were finished, we played a super fun game of Scoot using one card from each student.  Engagement at its finest!

Even though I did this assessment activity with reading task cards, you could EASILY adapt this to just about any set of math or reading task cards!  Have fun!