Assessment Is a Conversation – Getting Kids to Share What They Know with Dr. Nick Newton

Welcome fellow Recovering Traditionalists to: Assessment Is a Conversation – Getting Kids to Share What They Know with Dr. Nick Newton

In this episode I’m sharing the top vote-getter for Favorite session in Day 2 of the FROM Memorization TO Thinking Summit.  Day 2 sessions focused on Sharing.  We had 11 great sessions that gave ideas on helping students share their thinking in math class.  If you are interested in getting lifetime access to all 3 days of the summit sessions go to

[GET THE LIFETIME ACCESS →] https://buildmathminds.com/thinking-summit/ 

Okay, get ready for the favorite session from day 2.

This one was a tight vote.  At the top we had Mike Flynn talking about using Math Arguments, Juliana Tapper discussing the impact of shattered math confidence, Dr. Raj Shah’s conversation about the real reason we need kids to share, and the one I’m sharing in this episode….which is Dr. Nicki Newton getting us to see the need for using conversations to assess students in math class. 

Here is a summary of my chat with Dr. Nicki Newton from Day 2 of the FROM Memorization TO Thinking Summit:

Dr. Nicki Newton makes a case that assessment isn’t about catching what kids don’t know. It’s about listening for what they do.

What do they know?

Most of us were trained to assess in order to find the gaps – the wrong answers, the missing skills, the “not yet.” But Dr. Nicki argues we’ve had it backwards from the start:

“The goal is to know what they know… we picked up the wrong key. We’re always trying to figure out what they don’t know.”

Walk into almost any kindergarten classroom in the fall and you’ll find the whole class “on number four” – not because every child is actually ready for four, but because that’s what the textbooks says. No one asked the kids first. We do this constantly in math, she points out, in ways we would never tolerate in reading instruction.

Assessment shouldn’t be terrifying, for kids or for you

Dr. Nicki doesn’t let people off the hook. She’s pointed about the ways assessment has gone sideways: data walls that publicly rank students, timed fact tests that haven’t changed since the 1980s, ten-page manuals required to interpret a two-page test. None of it, she argues, tells us what we actually need to know and worse, it’s often traumatic for the very kids it’s supposed to help.

Her fix isn’t a new program. It’s a mindset shift: assessment should feel like sitting side by side with a child, not standing over them with a stopwatch.

The tool that changes everything: just ask them

The heart of this session is Dr. Nicki’s insistence that we radically underuse the simplest assessment tool available: talking to kids.

She tells a story that’s stuck with her for years. She was leading a lesson on doubles in a second-grade classroom. As she was leaving, a little girl handed her a hand-written sheet covered in multiplication facts, division facts, and even absolute value – none of which had anything to do with the day’s lesson. The message, Dr. Nicki realized, was unmistakable: I know so much more than what you asked me to show you today.

That moment reshaped how she opens every lesson now. Before diving into new content, she asks kids one question: “What do you already know about this?” It costs nothing, takes no prep, and consistently reveals knowledge that a worksheet never would.

She also pushes back, gently but firmly, on the “we don’t have time” objection teachers raise about oral assessment in math. Her challenge: we make time for running records and reading conferences without blinking. The real issue isn’t time. It’s priority.

Three places to start

Toward the end of the conversation, I asked where an overwhelmed teacher should begin. Dr. Nicki’s answer were three habits, not a program overhaul:

1. Open every unit by asking kids what they already know, and let them tell you and each other.
2. Confer with every student at least once during each unit, even briefly.
3. Build in one oral component to your assessment of priority standards, even if it’s just one question, recorded and reviewed later.

The takeaway

Dr. Nicki’s closing point is: when you talk with a child instead of just testing them, you learn things a score can never tell you – where their thinking actually lives, what strategy they’re leaning on, what plan they need to grow. That insight doesn’t show up on paper. It only shows up when we ask, and then actually listen.

If you’d like access to all the sessions from the summit, you can still get the Lifetime Access at https://buildmathminds.com/thinking-summit/ I just love learning from Dr. Nicki and I hoped this helped you Build Your Math Mind so you can build the math minds of students.