Ask PE teachers how they feel about assessment and the word you hear most often isn't "useful" or "informative." It's more likely to be "awkward", "ugh", "loss of activity time." For a lot of PE teachers, assessment feels like something tacked onto a lesson that was already going fine. A pause mid-activity, the class energy drops, students half-listening while wishing you'd just let them keep playing.

And underneath that awkwardness sits a deeper problem: most of us weren't really taught how or what to assess in PE, so we end up assessing what's easiest to see.

Who's trying hard.

Who's being positive.

Who's "engaged."

These things matter, but they're not learning. If that's the lens we use, we end up knowing a lot about effort and attitude and very little about whether students are actually developing as movers.

What’s behind that feeling usually comes down to three common challenges:

The good news is assessment in PE doesn’t have to be complicated. It can run within the lesson instead of interrupting it. And it can be grounded in three simple questions that most experienced PE teachers are already asking, just not always on purpose.

Instead of trying to watch everything or wondering what to focus on, these questions act as a simple guide to clarify your focus from what students are learning to how they’re doing and how you respond.

Here’s what that can look like in practice.

An Assessment Framework for PE

The framework below is built around three questions that cycle through a lesson, each one feeding into the next and helping align your teaching, assessment, and feedback.

The first question, what are they learning, is about being clear on what students are learning, not just what they are doing. Not “we’re playing basketball today” or “we’re in an invasion games unit,” but “we’re learning how to create space in a territorial game.” This level of clarity is what makes assessment, and the rest of the cycle, work. Without it, observation stays vague and feedback stays general.

The second question, how are they doing, is where assessment happens. To answer it, you need clear success criteria to look for as students engage in their learning. These can be the key points from what you’ve taught and are now watching for in action. Based on the learning focus for the day (question 1), what are you looking for as students engage in the task? You don’t need to capture everything at once, just what you’re focusing on.

The third question, what next, is where you respond to what you’re seeing. Using the success criteria as your reference point, you decide what to do next. That might be feedback to a student based on those criteria, or a decision about what to adjust in the lesson. Sometimes that means refining your instruction based on what you’re noticing.

For example:

• Give a student a specific cue, like “show your hands to receive a pass” or “snap your wrist a bit more when you shoot”
• Ask a question, such as “What happened to the space when everyone moved to one side?”
• Adjust your teaching, like reteaching a skill to a small group that needs more support, or modifying the task for those who are ready for more challenge

This is where assessment stops being passive and starts to shape what happens next in the lesson.

When this cycle runs within the lesson, assessment stops feeling like something extra and just becomes part of your everyday teaching.

One Small Thing to Try

Before your next lesson, identify one specific thing you are going to teach. Not a whole learning standard or objective, but something focused: a movement skill, a game play strategy, a health concept. This is your answer to question one.

From there, what are 1–3 things you would look for to understand how students are doing? These become your success criteria to help you answer question two.

As students are engaged in the learning, use those success criteria to gauge how they are progressing and decide what to do next. Do you need to adjust your instruction for the whole class or a small group? Can you provide specific feedback to a few students (e.g., 3-5 students)? Start small if this is new.

That’s the whole cycle. Each part builds on the last and leads into the next. It shifts assessment from something separate into an intentional part of teaching and learning while students are active.

Start with one learning focus ➡️ Watch for it ➡️ Do something with what you see.

That’s enough to get started.

Building on this, in the next newsletter I’ll share tips and approaches to construct feedback so students think about it and use it to improve, instead of the teacher doing most of the work with it.