Assessment Without Guessing: How to Recognize Deep Learning as It’s Happening

If you’ve ever finished a lesson and thought, “I think they understood… but I’m not completely sure,” you’re not alone.

For many teachers, assessment pressure doesn’t come from grading, it comes from uncertainty. How do you know when learning is actually deep, not just polite participation or memorized answers?

In this week’s deep dive video, I explored what deep learning looks like and shared two ways teachers can listen for and see learning as it’s happening.

👉 You can watch the video here

In this post, we’ll extend that thinking with three additional Finnish-aligned strategies that help teachers recognize deep learning without adding tests, worksheets, or pressure and we’ll briefly ground them in research so you can see that this approach is well-established, not invented.

A Quick Re-frame: Assessment as Noticing

In Finnish-aligned classrooms, assessment is not something separate from learning. It is the act of noticing patterns in student thinking and using those patterns to plan what comes next.

Deep learning often shows up when students:

• change their thinking

• connect ideas

• explain reasoning

• express uncertainty

• build on one another’s ideas

  
  

The challenge isn’t creating more assessments, it’s learning what to pay attention to.

Three Ways to Recognize Deep Learning

1. Lines (Continuum Thinking)

Making learning visible through movement and reflection

What students do:

Students physically position themselves along a line or continuum in response to a prompt such as:

• “How confident do you feel explaining this idea?”

• “How connected does this concept feel to what we learned before?”

Students then explain why they chose their position.

What teachers notice:

• shifts in confidence language

• students referencing evidence or examples

• movement over time (not just where students start)

Why this shows deep learning:

Deep learning involves meta-cognition students recognizing what they understand, what’s still forming, and what has changed. The movement is not the evidence; the explanation is.

2. Gallery Walk (Evidence Lens)

Recognizing learning patterns across the room

What students do:

Students quietly walk through displayed work-in-progress (not final products) and respond to prompts such as:

• “What strategies do you notice?”

• “What ideas appear more than once?”

• “What questions does this work raise?”

What teachers notice:

• recurring misconceptions

• emerging strategies

• connections students are beginning to articulate

Why this shows deep learning:

When students can notice patterns beyond their own work, they are operating at a conceptual level, not just a task level. This is a strong indicator of deeper understanding.

3. Languaging (Full-Sentence Reasoning)

Listening for depth through language

What students do:

Students are encouraged to explain ideas using complete reasoning:

• “I think this because…”

• “This connects to…”

• “At first I thought…, but now…”

This can happen orally or in writing.

What teachers notice:

• cause-and-effect thinking

• transfer of ideas

• increasing precision in language

• willingness to revise thinking publicly

Why this shows deep learning:

When students can articulate their thinking clearly, learning has moved beyond recall and into understanding.

A Brief Research Lens: Why This Works

Research on formative assessment strongly supports this approach. Educational researcher Dylan Wiliam emphasizes that assessment is most effective when it provides teachers with information to guide next instructional steps, rather than functioning as a judgment of learning.

Wiliam’s work shows that:

• learning deepens when students are asked to explain their thinking

• evidence gathered during learning is more useful than evidence collected afterward

• formative assessment works best when it is embedded in everyday classroom routines

This aligns closely with Finnish-aligned practice, where assessment is treated as a learning conversation and teachers use student thinking, not scores, to plan what comes next.

For further reading: Dylan Wiliam, Embedded Formative Assessment - https://www.dylanwiliam.org/Dylan_Wiliams_website/Welcome.html

What This Changes for Teachers

When you know what to listen for:

• assessment becomes calmer

• pacing decisions feel more confident

• planning becomes responsive rather than rushed

You stop asking, “Did they get it?” And start asking, “What are they showing me they’re ready for next?”

That shift alone reduces pressure and increases clarity.

A Gentle Next Step

Choose one of the strategies above and try it consistently for a few days. Not to collect data but to notice patterns.

If you’d like support learning how to plan this way more intentionally, this evidence-based approach is explored more deeply inside Rekla’s online courses, where teachers practice planning from real student thinking step by step.

Reflection Question

What is one signal of deep learning you’re already seeing but may not have been naming yet?

🌱 Further Reading

If you’d like to explore the research behind formative assessment and deep learning, these works offer a helpful starting point:

Dylan Wiliam — Embedded Formative Assessment

Explores how evidence gathered during everyday classroom interactions can guide teaching decisions and support deeper learning.

Paul Black & Dylan Wiliam — Assessment for Learning

Foundational research showing how student explanation, feedback, and reflection improve understanding more effectively than testing alone.

These ideas align closely with Finnish-inspired classrooms that treat assessment as a learning conversation rather than a judgment.