This classroom assessment tool offers teachers a method to identify academic needs across the curriculum for migrant, language-different, and mobile students. The primary strategy of this assessment system is to identify the knowledge and skill levels of these students in core curriculum areas. The snapshot assessment is a low-stakes, informal assessment system that has been structured to help the teacher plan instruction around the learning needs of the individual student. The student is asked to perform a series of tasks that are keyed to content standards. The tasks have been developed to be as free of cultural bias as possible. Both English and Spanish are used; Spanish is the dominant second language of students in the United States. There are 11 tasks for language arts, 17 tasks in mathematics, and 14 tasks in science. The user's manual section of the document contains an overview, discussions of the design of the assessment, a discussion of how to use the assessment system, a description of developing and testing the system. The target standards, benchmarks, and tasks are included in sections on national standards, language arts assessment, mathematics assessment, and science assessment. A student proficiency checklist is included. Appendixes contain a guide to Spanish pronunciation and a teacher's guide to commonly used directions for students. (Contains 16 references.) (SLD)