Tools for Teachers and Other Formative Assessment Resources

Tools for Teachers is the formative assessment component of the Smarter Balanced assessment system. The Formative Assessment Process is a deliberate process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides actionable feedback that is used to adjust ongoing teaching and learning strategies to improve students' attainment of curricular learning targets/goals. View the Understanding the Formative Assessment Process external icon for more information about the formative assessment process.

Select this button to visit the Smarter Balanced
Tools for Teachers website.

Tools for Teachers is an easy-to-use website featuring lessons, activities, and more that incorporate the formative assessment process and accessibility strategies. This website is meant to support teachers daily during their instruction to help educators reflect on their students' knowledge and take action on next steps to meet learning goals.

Tools for Teachers Training Videos

Tools for Teachers Flyers

Additional Resources

Other Online Formative Assessment Tools

Purpose Description
Smarter Balanced Content Explorer external icon This web application provides a user-friendly interface to explore the range of English language arts/literacy and mathematics knowledge and skills important for college and career readiness on the Smarter Balanced Assessments. The Content Explorer includes information about how the test questions are developed for specific aspects of the content and includes details about the specific aspects of the test questions. View the Smarter Balanced Content Explorer external icon video for more information.
Smarter Balanced Annotated Response Tool external icon This web application is designed to help educators better understand the rubrics that are used to score students' written responses to Smarter Balanced constructed-response items and performance tasks. Educators can view examples of student writing, scoring annotations, and rubrics to help understand what to look for when reviewing student responses and understand where to provide support to students in a specific writing area. Educators can use this professional learning resource as they work to standardize and calibrate their scoring of student writing samples. View the Smarter Annotated Response Tool Flyer external icon and the Getting Started with SmART Link to external site video for more information.
Lexile® & Quantile® Hub Resources This page contains resources for California educators interested in utilizing tools offered through the Lexile & Quantile Hub. The Hub contains instructional planning resources for educators and a variety of tools that support the monitoring of student growth in reading and math toward goals of college and career readiness.