Despite the emphasis on the FCAT and other standardized assessments, these tests make up only a portion of student assessment. To obtain insight on the progress of your students' skills, abilities and knowledge, you need to include several other types of assessment in your daily classroom interaction. Many types of effective assessment are embedded in instruction. Such things as asking pertinent, open-ended questions, monitoring student attention and responses, asking students to summarize or apply content, and providing students with practice using new information and skills are informal, yet effective assessment tools. You can be especially effective with these strategies when you know and understand your students well. When you identify clearly what it is you want your students to know, you can build a repertoire of techniques to determine how well your students are meeting the instructional objectives. Click here to see tips on building student competencies with instruction. As you develop the curriculum and teaching strategies for your students, use this checklist for creating effective assessments. Once you are at the point in your planning when you are ready to construct tests, quizzes and other assessments, use this guide for creating reliable assessments. Finally, learn from other teachers' questions, answers and experiences. To read some samples of beginning teachers' questions and answers from veteran teachers, click here.