AS A TEACHER, YOU ARE ALWAYS ASsessing your students. You walk around as they work on tasks or projects, observing groups, conversing with students, spot-teaching concepts and skills, and checking for understanding. This article describes similar work done through the Middle School Math through Applications Project (MMAP)—a comprehensive, project-based middle school mathematics curriculum project funded by the National Science Foundation. Its units are based on engaging scenarios in which students take the role of such mathematicsusing professionals as architects, biologists, and cartographers. We asked ourselves, “How can we organize this natural process to make better use of the precious information we get through informal contact with students?” We discuss some valuable techniques that MMAP teachers and researchers developed for organizing informal assessment so that it produces a coherent story of student progress; helps students make more progress with greater focus; and complements other types of embedded assessments, such as journal writing.
