Students vary in their interests, strengths, and skills. Individual passions and experiences contribute to each student’s approach to learning. Teachers who know their students are more able to motivate their students and establish appropriately high expectations.

To meet students’ needs, teachers need to know their students’ interests. Student interests often emerge when students are given chances to select their own reading materials or special topics of study. Many interests are age-related and others may be spurred on by new toys or games, television programs, or events in the news. However, many students have interests that are not tapped in any way at school.

One of the simplest ways to discover these interests is through an interest inventory. Students can check off items that are most like them or which interest them the most. These types of checklist inventories are a safe risk for students who may not feel comfortable telling others about their private interests. If the teacher explains that the purpose of the inventory is to help her make lessons more interesting, even reticent students may be willing to share their information.

Reticence among students to share their personal interests brings up the point that the more comfortable and safe students feel in their classroom learning environment, the more they are willing to open up. It is easy to understand how a feeling of belonging might be important for students to feel willing to share their personal interests. For this reason, any assessments at the beginning of the school year—especially for new students or older students who are naturally less open—should probably be low-risk. As the year progresses and class members get to know and respect one another better, assessment inquiries can be more direct.

Gathering assessment data about students’ interests and learning profiles may seem as unusual as it is unfamiliar to many teachers. How can it be “assessment” if it’s not measuring something? Good question! And the answer is that assessment for students’ interests and learning profiles is, indeed, measuring something, but that “something” isn’t as easily quantifiable as readiness data.

In essence, data about students’ interests relates to their individual preferences. Student preferences change over time and can provide the teacher with a roadmap for how to modify instruction. Unlike readiness data, information about interests changes more slowly. In a given school year, a student might progress through many levels of readiness, while maintaining essentially the same interests. Thus, while a teacher is constantly gathering readiness data, he might only gather interest and learning profile data a few times—probably at the beginning of each semester or major unit of study, for example.