Although this assessment board contains instructions specific to Gaston Leroux's, The Phantom of the Opera, this format can be easily modified to fit any text and any instructional focus.

I have my 10th grade students read The Phantom of the Opera because it is old enough that the structure, syntax and vocabulary are challenging, but not overwhelmingly so.  Additionally, because many students are familiar with the play by Andrew Lloyd Weber, I am able to tap into existing knowledge when helping them overcome difficulties with understanding the text. 

This assessment is intended as an end-of-unit assessment. What I like about it is that students have a wide-variety of response options which allows them to pick the path that shows their strengths rather than their weaknesses. However, because they have to score a "win" and must go through the center, the teacher can still ensure that whatever path students select, they will have demonstrated mastery of the unit materials.

This particular tic-tac-toe board was designed to allow students to conduct analysis for the following skills: compare/contrast, cause-and-effect, rhetoric and persuasion, and analysis of literary elements such as allusion, character, setting, and theme. However, it can be easily adapted to meet any learning objectives. For example, if a teacher wanted to use this with the Jekyll & Hyde "leader, skeptic, scribe" activity also published on GoOpen VA, the option boxes could be revised so that no matter which path students take, they must respond to one compare/contrast prompt and one cause-and-effect, in addition to the 5-Reasons Why analysis square.