Skip to main content
Amplify Desmos Math: Assessment overview

Assessments in Amplify Desmos Math

Updated over 3 months ago

Assessment opportunities are designed to provide individualized insights into students’ conceptual understanding at key moments throughout the year. These assessments are embedded throughout the program to track student performance and give you the data you need to meet the needs of all your students.

Every assessment point within a unit offers you an opportunity to reflect and act upon your students' understanding.

Every assessment item provides clear guidance on supporting students needing extra help. For students who are ready to boost their skills, they can access any of the strengthen or stretch resources, aligned to the content of the assessment, to build their understanding.

All unit-level and lesson-level assessments can be completed digitally in Grades 2–A1.


Unit-level assessments

The embedded unit assessments offer key insights into students’ conceptual understanding of math. There are four unit-level assessments available (varies by grade):

Unit-level assessments provide regular and actionable information about how students are thinking about and processing math, with both auto-scoring and in-depth rubrics that help you anticipate and respond to your students’ learning needs.

From Grade 2, all unit-level assessments can be completed digitally.

Sub-unit checklists (Grades K–1)

These checklists enable teachers to observe key skills and concepts that cannot be assessed on a pencil-and-paper assessment. The checklists outline the supports a student may need to reach their learning goals.

Sub-unit quizzes (Grades 1–A1)

With regular sub-unit quizzes, you can follow your students’ understanding throughout the unit. These quizzes focus on a subset of conceptual topics from the unit.

The student digital version of a sub-unit quiz.

Accompanying rubrics shed light on your students' current grasp of the content and offer direction on how to respond to their thought processes.

Pre-unit checks (Grades 2–A1)

Each unit begins with a check to determine student proficiency with prerequisite skills needed for success in the upcoming unit. This check is agnostic to the standards covered in the following unit and serves not as a deficit-based acknowledgment of what students do not know, but rather as an affirmation of the knowledge and skills with which students come in.

Grade 3 print pre-unit check

Grade 3 print pre-unit check

Grade 7 digital pre-unit check

Grade 7 digital pre-unit check

End-of-unit assessments (Grades K–A1)

In the end-of-unit assessments, students engage with rigorous grade-level mathematics through a variety of formats and tasks. A combination of auto-scored and rubric-scored items provide deep conceptual insight.

The end-of-unit assessment has two forms (Form A and Form B), so that you can assign different versions of the same test to students, or retest students on the same concepts.


Lesson-level assessments

Lesson-level assessments offer valuable evidence of learning and show student progress throughout a lesson. You can provide direct feedback to motivate your students on their work. These include Show-What-You-Know problems, which give students an opportunity to focus on a key concept in the lesson, and give you insight into your student’s daily needs.


mCLASS Beginning-of-Year Screener (Grades K–8)

The integrated mCLASS® Beginning-of-Year (BOY) Screener identifies students’ knowledge and abilities at the start of the year. It is a brief assessment that focuses on fundamental concepts essential for students learning new grade-level material, available for Grades K–8.

The mCLASS BOY Screener uses an asset-based approach to help to reveal students’ math thinking. It provides insights about what students know, what math assets to leverage, and where students need support.


Customized assessments

You can also copy and customize assessments in Amplify Desmos Math.

You may customize an assessment to:

  • Make minor changes to the text of a screen.

  • Remove prompts to make questions harder.

  • Add components to allow students to show their thinking.

  • Align to district or curriculum needs.

  • Tailor assessments to the needs of student groups (i.e., Individualized Education Plan groups).

  • Have more assessments for retests.

Customized assessments are available in teacher reporting!

You can view reporting for your customized assessments in the Assessment Report.

Customized assessments won’t display in the Standards Report, but you can view scores for customized assessments organized by item in the Results table and use them to understand student performance.

Customizing assessments can change the related standards, and those assessments may no longer be accurate for reporting purposes.


Assessment grading and reporting

Learn about Teacher reporting:

Did this answer your question?