A fun and engaging way to assess student knowledge and application is to allow students to create a project based on any given topic. A common project for students at all grade levels is to create their own newspaper. The following link offers
templates for Google documents for students of all ability levels. Working in pairs or individually students can create their own newspapers based on social studies and science topics (expository writing), review of books, an op-ed (opinion/argumentative), or report on current events (expository, cause/effect). Printing and displaying on walls, creating online portfolios of work, and peer sharing are some ways to disseminate their work.
Please let me know how these work out for you. I would love to see the student's work and share some pictures of their work here.
Be well.