formative assessment format

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7 Smart, Fast Ways to Do Formative Assessment

Within these methods you’ll find close to 40 tools and tricks for finding out what your students know while they’re still learning.

Formative assessment—discovering what students know while they’re still in the process of learning it—can be tricky. Designing just the right assessment can feel high stakes—for teachers, not students—because we’re using it to figure out what comes next. Are we ready to move on? Do our students need a different path into the concepts? Or, more likely, which students are ready to move on and which need a different path?

When it comes to figuring out what our students really know, we have to look at more than one kind of information. A single data point—no matter how well designed the quiz, presentation, or problem behind it—isn’t enough information to help us plan the next step in our instruction.

Add to that the fact that different learning tasks are best measured in different ways, and we can see why we need a variety of formative assessment tools we can deploy quickly, seamlessly, and in a low-stakes way—all while not creating an unmanageable workload. That’s why it’s important to keep it simple: Formative assessments generally just need to be checked, not graded, as the point is to get a basic read on the progress of individuals, or the class as a whole.

7 Approaches to Formative Assessment

1. Entry and exit slips: Those marginal minutes at the beginning and end of class can provide some great opportunities to find out what kids remember. Start the class off with a quick question about the previous day’s work while students are getting settled—you can ask differentiated questions written out on chart paper or projected on the board, for example.

Exit slips can take lots of forms beyond the old-school pencil and scrap paper. Whether you’re assessing at the bottom of Bloom’s taxonomy or the top, you can use tools like Padlet or Poll Everywhere , or measure progress toward attainment or retention of essential content or standards with tools like Google Classroom’s Question tool , Google Forms with Flubaroo , and Edulastic , all of which make seeing what students know a snap.

A quick way to see the big picture if you use paper exit tickets is to sort the papers into three piles : Students got the point; they sort of got it; and they didn’t get it. The size of the stacks is your clue about what to do next.

No matter the tool, the key to keeping students engaged in the process of just-walked-in or almost-out-the-door formative assessment is the questions. Ask students to write for one minute on the most meaningful thing they learned. You can try prompts like:

• What are three things you learned, two things you’re still curious about, and one thing you don’t understand?
• How would you have done things differently today, if you had the choice?
• What I found interesting about this work was...
• Right now I’m feeling...
• Today was hard because...

Or skip the words completely and have students draw or circle emojis to represent their assessment of their understanding.

2. Low-stakes quizzes and polls: If you want to find out whether your students really know as much as you think they know, polls and quizzes created with Socrative or Quizlet or in-class games and tools like Quizalize , Kahoot , FlipQuiz, Gimkit , Plickers , and Flippity can help you get a better sense of how much they really understand. (Grading quizzes but assigning low point values is a great way to make sure students really try: The quizzes matter, but an individual low score can’t kill a student’s grade.) Kids in many classes are always logged in to these tools, so formative assessments can be done very quickly. Teachers can see each kid’s response, and determine both individually and in aggregate how students are doing.

Because you can design the questions yourself, you determine the level of complexity. Ask questions at the bottom of Bloom’s taxonomy and you’ll get insight into what facts, vocabulary terms, or processes kids remember. Ask more complicated questions (“What advice do you think Katniss Everdeen would offer Scout Finch if the two of them were talking at the end of chapter 3?”), and you’ll get more sophisticated insights.

3. Dipsticks: So-called alternative formative assessments are meant to be as easy and quick as checking the oil in your car, so they’re sometimes referred to as dipsticks . These can be things like asking students to:

• write a letter explaining a key idea to a friend,
• draw a sketch to visually represent new knowledge, or
• do a think, pair, share exercise with a partner.

Your own observations of students at work in class can provide valuable data as well, but they can be tricky to keep track of. Taking quick notes on a tablet or smartphone, or using a copy of your roster, is one approach. A focused observation form is more formal and can help you narrow your note-taking focus as you watch students work.

4. Interview assessments: If you want to dig a little deeper into students’ understanding of content, try discussion-based assessment methods. Casual chats with students in the classroom can help them feel at ease even as you get a sense of what they know, and you may find that five-minute interview assessments work really well. Five minutes per student would take quite a bit of time, but you don’t have to talk to every student about every project or lesson.

You can also shift some of this work to students using a peer-feedback process called TAG feedback (Tell your peer something they did well, Ask a thoughtful question, Give a positive suggestion). When you have students share the feedback they have for a peer, you gain insight into both students’ learning.

For more introverted students—or for more private assessments—use Flipgrid , Explain Everything , or Seesaw to have students record their answers to prompts and demonstrate what they can do.

5. Methods that incorporate art: Consider using visual art or photography or videography as an assessment tool. Whether students draw, create a collage, or sculpt, you may find that the assessment helps them synthesize their learning . Or think beyond the visual and have kids act out their understanding of the content. They can create a dance to model cell mitosis or act out stories like Ernest Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” to explore the subtext.

6. Misconceptions and errors: Sometimes it’s helpful to see if students understand why something is incorrect or why a concept is hard. Ask students to explain the “ muddiest point ” in the lesson—the place where things got confusing or particularly difficult or where they still lack clarity. Or do a misconception check : Present students with a common misunderstanding and ask them to apply previous knowledge to correct the mistake, or ask them to decide if a statement contains any mistakes at all, and then discuss their answers.

7. Self-assessment: Don’t forget to consult the experts—the kids. Often you can give your rubric to your students and have them spot their strengths and weaknesses.

You can use sticky notes to get a quick insight into what areas your kids think they need to work on. Ask them to pick their own trouble spot from three or four areas where you think the class as a whole needs work, and write those areas in separate columns on a whiteboard. Have you students answer on a sticky note and then put the note in the correct column—you can see the results at a glance.

Several self-assessments let the teacher see what every kid thinks very quickly. For example, you can use colored stacking cups that allow kids to flag that they’re all set (green cup), working through some confusion (yellow), or really confused and in need of help (red).

Similar strategies involve using participation cards for discussions (each student has three cards—“I agree,” “I disagree,” and “I don’t know how to respond”) and thumbs-up responses (instead of raising a hand, students hold a fist at their belly and put their thumb up when they’re ready to contribute). Students can instead use six hand gestures to silently signal that they agree, disagree, have something to add, and more. All of these strategies give teachers an unobtrusive way to see what students are thinking.

No matter which tools you select, make time to do your own reflection to ensure that you’re only assessing the content and not getting lost in the assessment fog . If a tool is too complicated, is not reliable or accessible, or takes up a disproportionate amount of time, it’s OK to put it aside and try something different.

14 Examples of Formative Assessment [+FAQs]

Traditional student assessment typically comes in the form of a test, pop quiz, or more thorough final exam. But as many teachers will tell you, these rarely tell the whole story or accurately determine just how well a student has learned a concept or lesson.

That’s why many teachers are utilizing formative assessments. While formative assessment is not necessarily a new tool, it is becoming increasingly popular amongst K-12 educators across all subject levels. 

Curious? Read on to learn more about types of formative assessment and where you can access additional resources to help you incorporate this new evaluation style into your classroom.

What is Formative Assessment?

Online education glossary EdGlossary defines formative assessment as “a wide variety of methods that teachers use to conduct in-process evaluations of student comprehension, learning needs, and academic progress during a lesson, unit, or course.” They continue, “formative assessments help teachers identify concepts that students are struggling to understand, skills they are having difficulty acquiring, or learning standards they have not yet achieved so that adjustments can be made to lessons, instructional techniques, and academic support.”

The primary reason educators utilize formative assessment, and its primary goal, is to measure a student’s understanding while instruction is happening. Formative assessments allow teachers to collect lots of information about a student’s comprehension while they’re learning, which in turn allows them to make adjustments and improvements in the moment. And, the results speak for themselves — formative assessment has been proven to be highly effective in raising the level of student attainment, increasing equity of student outcomes, and improving students’ ability to learn, according to a study from the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). 

On the flipside of the assessment coin is summative assessments, which are what we typically use to evaluate student learning. Summative assessments are used after a specific instructional period, such as at the end of a unit, course, semester, or even school year. As learning and formative assessment expert Paul Black puts it, “when the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative assessment. When a customer tastes the soup, that’s summative assessment.”

14 Examples of Formative Assessment Tools & Strategies

There are many types of formative assessment tools and strategies available to teachers, and it’s even possible to come up with your own. However, here are some of the most popular and useful formative assessments being used today.

• Round Robin Charts

Students break out into small groups and are given a blank chart and writing utensils. In these groups, everyone answers an open-ended question about the current lesson. Beyond the question, students can also add any relevant knowledge they have about the topic to their chart. These charts then rotate from group to group, with each group adding their input. Once everyone has written on every chart, the class regroups and discusses the responses. 

• Strategic Questioning

This formative assessment style is quite flexible and can be used in many different settings. You can ask individuals, groups, or the whole class high-level, open-ended questions that start with “why” or “how.” These questions have a two-fold purpose — to gauge how well students are grasping the lesson at hand and to spark a discussion about the topic. 

• Three-Way Summaries

These written summaries of a lesson or subject ask students to complete three separate write-ups of varying lengths: short (10-15 words), medium (30-50 words), and long (75-100). These different lengths test students’ ability to condense everything they’ve learned into a concise statement, or elaborate with more detail. This will demonstrate to you, the teacher, just how much they have learned, and it will also identify any learning gaps. 

• Think-Pair-Share

Think-pair-share asks students to write down their answers to a question posed by the teacher. When they’re done, they break off into pairs and share their answers and discuss. You can then move around the room, dropping in on discussions and getting an idea of how well students are understanding.

• 3-2-1 Countdown

This formative assessment tool can be written or oral and asks students to respond to three very simple prompts: Name three things you didn’t know before, name two things that surprised you about this topic, and name one you want to start doing with what you’ve learned. The exact questions are flexible and can be tailored to whatever unit or lesson you are teaching.

• Classroom Polls

This is a great participation tool to use mid-lesson. At any point, pose a poll question to students and ask them to respond by raising their hand. If you have the capability, you can also use online polling platforms and let students submit their answers on their Chromebooks, tablets, or other devices.

• Exit/Admission Tickets

Exit and admission tickets are quick written exercises that assess a student’s comprehension of a single day’s lesson. As the name suggests, exit tickets are short written summaries of what students learned in class that day, while admission tickets can be performed as short homework assignments that are handed in as students arrive to class.

• One-Minute Papers

This quick, formative assessment tool is most useful at the end of the day to get a complete picture of the classes’ learning that day. Put one minute on the clock and pose a question to students about the primary subject for the day. Typical questions might be:

• What was the main point?
• What questions do you still have?
• What was the most surprising thing you learned?
• What was the most confusing aspect and why?
• Creative Extension Projects

These types of assessments are likely already part of your evaluation strategy and include projects like posters and collage, skit performances, dioramas, keynote presentations, and more. Formative assessments like these allow students to use more creative parts of their skillset to demonstrate their understanding and comprehension and can be an opportunity for individual or group work.

Dipsticks — named after the quick and easy tool we use to check our car’s oil levels — refer to a number of fast, formative assessment tools. These are most effective immediately after giving students feedback and allowing them to practice said skills. Many of the assessments on this list fall into the dipstick categories, but additional options include writing a letter explaining the concepts covered or drawing a sketch to visually represent the topic. 

• Quiz-Like Games and Polls

A majority of students enjoy games of some kind, and incorporating games that test a student’s recall and subject aptitude are a great way to make formative assessment more fun. These could be Jeopardy-like games that you can tailor around a specific topic, or even an online platform that leverages your own lessons. But no matter what game you choose, these are often a big hit with students.

• Interview-Based Assessments

Interview-based assessments are a great way to get first-hand insight into student comprehension of a subject. You can break out into one-on-one sessions with students, or allow them to conduct interviews in small groups. These should be quick, casual conversations that go over the biggest takeaways from your lesson. If you want to provide structure to student conversations, let them try the TAG feedback method — tell your peer something they did well, ask a thoughtful question, and give a positive suggestion.

• Self Assessment

Allow students to take the rubric you use to perform a self assessment of their knowledge or understanding of a topic. Not only will it allow them to reflect on their own work, but it will also very clearly demonstrate the gaps they need filled in. Self assessments should also allow students to highlight where they feel their strengths are so the feedback isn’t entirely negative.

• Participation Cards

Participation cards are a great tool you can use on-the-fly in the middle of a lesson to get a quick read on the entire classes’ level of understanding. Give each student three participation cards — “I agree,” “I disagree,” and “I don’t know how to respond” — and pose questions that they can then respond to with those cards. This will give you a quick gauge of what concepts need more coverage.

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List of Formative Assessment Resources

There are many, many online formative assessment resources available to teachers. Here are just a few of the most widely-used and highly recommended formative assessment sites available.

• Arizona State Dept of Education

FAQs About Formative Assessment

The following frequently asked questions were sourced from the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD), a leading education professional organization of more than 100,000 superintendents, principals, teachers, and advocates.  

Is formative assessment something new?

No and yes. The concept of measuring a student’s comprehension during lessons has existed for centuries. However, the concept of formative assessment as we understand it didn’t appear until approximately 40 years ago, and has progressively expanded into what it is today.

What makes something a formative assessment?

ASCD characterized formative assessment as “a way for teachers and students to gather evidence of learning, engage students in assessment, and use data to improve teaching and learning.” Their definition continues, “when you use an assessment instrument— a test, a quiz, an essay, or any other kind of classroom activity—analytically and diagnostically to measure the process of learning and then, in turn, to inform yourself or your students of progress and guide further learning, you are engaging in formative assessment. If you were to use the same instrument for the sole purpose of gathering data to report to a district or state or to determine a final grade, you would be engaging in summative assessment.”

Does formative assessment work in all content areas?

Absolutely, and it works across all grade levels. Nearly any content area — language arts, math, science, humanities, and even the arts or physical education — can utilize formative assessment in a positive way.

How can formative assessment support the curriculum?

Formative assessment supports curricula by providing real-time feedback on students’ knowledge levels and comprehension of the subject at hand. When teachers regularly utilize formative assessment tools, they can find gaps in student learning and customize lessons to fill those gaps. After term is over, teachers can use this feedback to reshape their curricula.

How can formative assessment be used to establish instructional priorities?

Because formative assessment supports curriculum development and updates, it thereby influences instructional priorities. Through student feedback and formative assessment, teachers are able to gather data about which instructional methods are most (and least) successful. This “data-driven” instruction should yield more positive learning outcomes for students.

Can formative assessment close achievement gaps?

Formative assessment is ideal because it identifies gaps in student knowledge while they’re learning. This allows teachers to make adjustments to close these gaps and help students more successfully master a new skill or topic.

How can I help my students understand formative assessment?

Formative assessment should be framed as a supportive learning tool; it’s a very different tactic than summative assessment strategies. To help students understand this new evaluation style, make sure you utilize it from the first day in the classroom. Introduce a small number of strategies and use them repeatedly so students become familiar with them. Eventually, these formative assessments will become second nature to teachers and students.

Before you tackle formative assessment, or any new teaching strategy for that matter, consider taking a continuing education course. At the University of San Diego School of Professional and Continuing Education, we offer over 500 courses for educators that can be completed entirely online, and many at your own pace. So no matter what your interests are, you can surely find a course — or even a certificate — that suits your needs.

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Formative Assessment of Teaching

What is formative assessment of teaching.

How do you know if your teaching is effective? How can you identify areas where your teaching can improve? What does it look like to assess teaching?

Formative Assessment

Formative assessment of teaching consists of different approaches to continuously evaluate your teaching. The insight gained from this assessment can support revising your teaching strategies, leading to better outcomes in student learning and experiences. Formative assessment can be contrasted with summative assessment, which is usually part of an evaluative decision-making process. The table below outlines some of the key differences between formative and summative assessment: 

By participating in formative assessment, instructors connect with recent developments in the space of teaching and learning, as well as incorporate new ideas into their practice. Developments may include changes in the students we serve, changes in our understanding of effective teaching, and changes in expectations of the discipline and of higher education as a whole.

Formative assessment of teaching ultimately should guide instructors towards using more effective teaching practices. What does effectiveness mean in terms of teaching?

Effectiveness in Teaching

Effective teaching can be defined as teaching that leads to the intended outcomes in student learning and experiences. In this sense, there is no single perfect teaching approach. Effective teaching looks will depend on the stated goals for student learning and experiences. A course that aims to build student confidence in statistical analysis and a course that aims to develop student writing could use very different teaching strategies, and still both be effective at accomplishing their respective goals. 

Assessing student learning and experiences is critical to determining if teaching is truly effective in its context. This assessment can be quite complex, but it is doable. In addition to measuring the impacts of your teaching, you may also consider evaluating your teaching as it aligns with best practices for evidence-based teaching especially in the disciplinary and course context or aligns with your intended teaching approach. The table below outlines these three approaches to assessing the effectiveness of your teaching:

What are some strategies that I might try? 

There are multiple ways that instructors might begin to assess their teaching. The list below includes approaches that may be done solo, with colleagues, or with the input of students. Instructors may pursue one or more of these strategies at different points in time. With each possible strategy, we have included several examples of the strategy in practice from a variety of institutions and contexts.

Teaching Portfolios

Teaching portfolios are well-suited for formative assessment of teaching, as the portfolio format lends itself to documenting how your teaching has evolved over time. Instructors can use their teaching portfolios as a reflective practice to review past teaching experiences, what worked and what did not.

Teaching portfolios consist of various pieces of evidence about your teaching such as course syllabi, outlines, lesson plans, course evaluations, and more. Instructors curate these pieces of evidence into a collection, giving them the chance to highlight their own growth and focus as educators. While student input may be incorporated as part of the portfolio, instructors can contextualize and respond to student feedback, giving them the chance to tell their own teaching story from a more holistic perspective.

Teaching portfolios encourage self-reflection, especially with guided questions or rubrics to review your work. In addition, an instructor might consider sharing their entire teaching portfolio or selected materials for a single course with colleagues and engaging in a peer review discussion. 

Examples and Resources:

Teaching Portfolio - Career Center

Developing a Statement of Teaching Philosophy and Teaching Portfolio - GSI Teaching & Resource Center

Self Assessment - UCLA Center for Education, Innovation, and Learning in the Sciences

Advancing Inclusion and Anti-Racism in the College Classroom Rubric and Guide

Course Design Equity and Inclusion Rubric

Teaching Demos or Peer Observation

Teaching demonstrations or peer classroom observation provide opportunities to get feedback on your teaching practice, including communication skills or classroom management.

Teaching demonstrations may be arranged as a simulated classroom environment in front of a live audience who take notes and then deliver summarized feedback. Alternatively, demonstrations may involve recording an instructor teaching to an empty room, and this recording can be subjected to later self-review or peer review. Evaluation of teaching demos will often focus on the mechanics of teaching especially for a lecture-based class, e.g. pacing of speech, organization of topics, clarity of explanations.

In contrast, instructors may invite a colleague to observe an actual class session to evaluate teaching in an authentic situation. This arrangement gives the observer a better sense of how the instructor interacts with students both individually or in groups, including their approach to answering questions or facilitating participation. The colleague may take general notes on what they observe or evaluate the instructor using a teaching rubric or other structured tool.

Peer Review of Course Instruction

Preparing for a Teaching Demonstration - UC Irvine Center for Educational Effectiveness

Based on Peer Feedback - UCLA Center for Education, Innovation, and Learning in the Sciences

Teaching Practices Equity and Inclusion Rubric

Classroom Observation Protocol for Undergraduate STEM (COPUS)

Student Learning Assessments

Student learning can vary widely across courses or even between academic terms. However, having a clear benchmark for the intended learning objectives and determining whether an instructor’s course as implemented helps students to reach that benchmark can be an invaluable piece of information to guide your teaching. The method for measuring student learning will depend on the stated learning objective, but a well-vetted instrument can provide the most reliable data.

Recommended steps and considerations for using student learning assessments to evaluate your teaching efficacy include:

Identify a small subset of course learning objectives to focus on, as it is more useful to accurately evaluate one objective vs. evaluating many objectives inaccurately.

Find a well-aligned and well-developed measure for each selected course learning objective, such as vetted exam questions, rubrics, or concept inventories.

If relevant, develop a prompt or assignment that will allow students to demonstrate the learning objective to then be evaluated against the measure.

Plan the timing of data collection to enable useful comparison and interpretation.

Do you want to compare how students perform at the start of your course compared to the same students at the end of your course?

Do you want to compare how the same students perform before and after a specific teaching activity?

Do you want to compare how students in one term perform compared to students in the next term, after changing your teaching approach?

Implement the assignment/prompt and evaluate a subset or all of the student work according to the measure.

Reflect on the results and compare student performance measures.

Are students learning as a result of your teaching activity and course design?

Are students learning to the degree that you intended?

Are students learning more when you change how you teach?

This process can be repeated as many times as needed or the process can be restarted to instead focus on a different course learning objective.

List of Concept Inventories (STEM)

Best Practices for Administering Concept Inventories (Physics)

AAC&U VALUE Rubrics

Rubric Bank | Assessment and Curriculum Support Center - University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa

Rubrics - World Languages Resource Collection - Kennesaw State University

Student Surveys or Focus Groups

Surveys or focus groups are effective tools to better understand the student experience in your courses, as well as to solicit feedback on how courses can be improved. Hearing student voices is critical as students themselves can attest to how course activities made them feel, e.g. whether they perceive the learning environment to be inclusive, or what topics they find interesting.

Some considerations for using student surveys in your teaching include:

Surveys collect individual and anonymous input from as many students as possible.

Surveys can gather both quantitative and qualitative data.

Surveys that are anonymous avoid privileging certain voices over others.

Surveys can enable students to share about sensitive experiences that they may be reluctant to discuss publicly.

Surveys that are anonymous may lend to negative response bias.

Survey options at UC Berkeley include customized course evaluation questions or anonymous surveys on bCourses, Google Forms, or Qualtrics. 

Some considerations for using student focus groups in your teaching include:

Focus groups leverage the power of group brainstorming to identify problems and imagine possible solutions.

Focus groups can gather both rich and nuanced qualitative data.

Focus groups with a skilled facilitator tend to have more moderated responses given the visibility of the discussion.

Focus groups take planning, preparation, and dedicated class time.

Focus group options at UC Berkeley include scheduling a Mid-semester Inquiry (MSI) to be facilitated by a CTL staff member.

Instructions for completing question customization for your evaluations as an instructor

Course Evaluations Question Bank

Student-Centered Evaluation Questions for Remote Learning

Based on Student Feedback - UCLA Center for Education, Innovation, and Learning in the Sciences

How Can Instructors Encourage Students to Complete Course Evaluations and Provide Informative Responses?

Student Views/Attitudes/Affective Instruments - ASBMB

Student Skills Inventories - ASBMB

How might I get started?

Self-assess your own course materials using one of the available rubrics listed above.

Schedule a teaching observation with CTL to get a colleague’s feedback on your teaching practices and notes on student engagement.

Schedule an MSI with CTL to gather directed student feedback with the support of a colleague.

Have more questions? Schedule a general consultation with CTL or send us your questions by email ( [email protected] )!

References:

Evaluating Teaching - UCSB Instructional Development

Documenting Teaching - UCSC Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning

Other Forms of Evaluation - UCLA Center for Education, Innovation, and Learning in the Sciences

Evaluation Of Teaching Committee on Teaching, Academic Senate

Report of the Academic Council Teaching Evaluation Task Force

Teaching Quality Framework Initiative Resources - University of Colorado Boulder

Benchmarks for Teaching Effectiveness - University of Kansas  Center for Teaching Excellence

Teaching Practices Instruments - ASBMB

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What Is Formative Assessment and How Should Teachers Use It?

Check student progress as they learn, and adapt to their needs.

Assessments are a regular part of the learning process, giving both teachers and students a chance to measure their progress. There are several common types of assessments, including pre-assessment (diagnostic) and post-assessment (summative). Some educators, though, argue that the most important of all are formative assessments. So, what is formative assessment, and how can you use it effectively with your students? Read on to find out.

What is formative assessment?

Source: KNILT

Formative assessment takes place while learning is still happening. In other words, teachers use formative assessment to gauge student progress throughout a lesson or activity. This can take many forms (see below), depending on the teacher, subject, and learning environment. Here are some key characteristics of this type of assessment:

Low-Stakes (or No-Stakes)

Most formative assessments aren’t graded, or at least aren’t used in calculating student grades at the end of the grading period. Instead, they’re part of the daily give-and-take between teachers and students. They’re often quick and used immediately after teaching a specific objective.

Planned and Part of the Lesson

Rather than just being quick check-for-understanding questions many teachers ask on the fly, formative assessments are built into a lesson or activity. Teachers consider the skills or knowledge they want to check on, and use one of many methods to gather information on student progress. Students can also use formative assessments among themselves for self-assessment and peer feedback.

Used to Make Adjustments to Teaching Plans

After gathering student feedback, teachers use that feedback to make adjustments to their lessons or activities as needed. Students who self-assess then know what areas they still need help with and can ask for assistance.

How is formative assessment different from other assessments?

Source: Helpful Professor

There are three general types of assessment: diagnostic, formative, and summative. Diagnostic assessments are used before learning to determine what students already do and do not know. Think pre-tests and other activities students attempt at the beginning of a unit. Teachers may use these to make some adjustments to their planned lessons, skipping or just recapping what students already know.

Diagnostic assessments are the opposite of summative assessments, which are used at the end of a unit or lesson to determine what students have learned. By comparing diagnostic and summative assessments, teachers and learners can get a clearer picture of how much progress they’ve made.

Formative assessments take place during instruction. They’re used throughout the learning process and help teachers make on-the-go adjustments to instruction and activities as needed.

Why is formative assessment important in the classroom?

These assessments give teachers and students a chance to be sure that meaningful learning is really happening. Teachers can try new methods and gauge their effectiveness. Students can experiment with different learning activities, without fear that they’ll be punished for failure. As Chase Nordengren of the NWEA puts it :

“Formative assessment is a critical tool for educators looking to unlock in-depth information on student learning in a world of change. Rather than focusing on a specific test, formative assessment focuses on practices teachers undertake during learning that provide information on student progress toward learning outcomes.”

It’s all about increasing your ability to connect with students and make their learning more effective and meaningful.

What are some examples of formative assessment?

Source: Writing City

There are so many ways teachers can use formative assessments in the classroom! We’ve highlighted a few perennial favorites, but you can find a big list of 25 creative and effective formative assessments options here .

Exit Tickets

At the end of a lesson or class, pose a question for students to answer before they leave. They can answer using a sticky note, online form, or digital tool.

Kahoot Quizzes

Kids and teachers adore Kahoot! Kids enjoy the gamified fun, while teachers appreciate the ability to analyze the data later to see which topics students understand well and which need more time.

We love Flip (formerly Flipgrid) for helping teachers connect with students who hate speaking up in class. This innovative (and free!) tech tool lets students post selfie videos in response to teacher prompts. Kids can view each other’s videos, commenting and continuing the conversation in a low-key way.

What is your favorite way to use formative assessments in the classroom? Come exchange ideas in the WeAreTeachers HELPLINE group on Facebook .

Plus, check out the best tech tools for student assessment ..

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25 Formative Assessment Options Your Students Will Actually Enjoy

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Formative assessments: the ultimate guide for teachers

• Categories Blog
• Date February 14, 2024

K-12 education is a construction process where students’ skills and knowledge are gradually built up, with every preceding “block” essential to keep on building.

As a teacher, it’s your job to ensure that your students have the core knowledge they need to keep advancing through their education. You need a daily understanding of their current skills and knowledge so that you can accurately gauge their progression, and decide what to teach them next.

One of the most effective, proven ways to do this is with formative assessments (OECD, 2008). 1 They’re a crucial tool in your teaching kit, helping you to provide quality education to students.

Table of contents

• What are formative assessments?
• Evidence that formative assessment works
• Formative assessment examples / types
• Formative assessment strategies for your school and classroom

1. What are formative assessments?

Formative assessments are regular low-stakes tests that help you gauge students’ understanding. They are “dipsticks” where you can quickly check learning as you might quickly check the oil in your car, allowing you to adapt your teaching and fill knowledge gaps while learning is still taking place.

Quizzes are a common example of formative assessments. They’re quick to create, complete, and mark, and give you a good impression of students’ understanding of the content and their progress for the unit. You can see which questions and topics they are struggling with, re-teach them, and then re-test – a rapid feedback and improvement cycle that boosts student outcomes and moves them along their learning journeys.

You can see how this differs from summative assessments like end-of-year exams. These are one-off tests used to evaluate student understanding after learning has finished, with no opportunity to improve. Their purpose is to grade. But with formative assessments, getting the right answers isn’t important because that isn’t the objective. Instead, the purpose is to provide you with continuous, fast “readings” of student progress which you use to adapt your teaching and advance their learning. Summative assessments are to grade, and formative assessments are to direct .

As you can imagine, this sets entirely different tones for the two types of assessment. Summative tests can be high-stakes with real consequences that shape students’ future opportunities. This makes them understandably anxious, which can significantly affect their performance (Embse et al., 2018). 2 Formative assessments, on the other hand, are low-stakes, light-touch tests that are (ideally) designed to be fun and engaging, and to boost learning outcomes (OECD, 2008). 5 Formative assessments help to improve summative assessment scores/grades (and more importantly, their education), but this doesn’t work the other way around.

To make our position clear: both types of assessment have an important place in education. They just have different purposes and effects on students. If you’d like a more detailed comparison of these two types of assessment, please check out our article here .

How formative assessments help your teaching

“Formative assessment – while not a “silver bullet” that can solve all educational challenges – offers a powerful means for meeting goals for high-performance, high-equity of student outcomes, and for providing students with knowledge and skills for lifelong learning.” 1

– OECD

In essence, formative assessments help you answer three key questions:

• Are students learning what they need to learn?
• Are students learning at a steady pace?
• What should be taught next?

The answers to these questions form an objective appraisal of your current teaching strategies and lesson plans, providing clues on what needs to change. This may include the following and more:

• Change of content – formative assessments reveal student understanding, which includes any learning gaps or misconceptions they may have. With this information, you can adjust the content being taught to ensure they are learning what they need.
• Refine learning intentions – when you have a strong understanding of your students’ knowledge and skills, you’re able to write more precise learning intentions in your lesson plans, and by extension, better plans overall that accurately address students’ needs.
• Group students based on ability – formative assessments are usually given to entire classes, which reveals students’ both individually, and as a whole. If assessment results reveal distinct groupings of students based on their knowledge and skill, and you have the capacity to group them in your class and set unique work, that’s a much more inclusive way to teach and likely to result in better learning outcomes. More broadly, this information also helps you form separate support classes or Gifted and Talented classes.
• Change frequency of assessment – if you’ve previously identified knowledge gaps, you’ll want to re-assess after learning to ensure they’re filled. While formative assessment should be a regular occurrence in your class, the frequency should change depending on the results and other feedback you get from students.

Formative assessments in action – a quick example

“Assessment is the bridge between teaching and learning. It’s only by assessment that you know what has been taught, has been learned.” 3

– Dylan Wiliam, formative assessment expert

To give you an example of formative assessments in action, let’s say you’re a Year 8 Science teacher starting a new term with students, and before proceeding with the content assigned to this term, you want to check their understanding to ensure they’ve mastered the prerequisite content, allowing you to correctly build on their knowledge.

As part of this term, students are extending their knowledge of biological sciences. So you ask them to take five minutes to create individual mind maps of everything they remember about cells – a brain dump of the content they have already been taught last term. Walking around the class, you can see maps that contain organelles, membranes, nuclei, and even little drawings of cell structures. Some students have filled their A4 sheet and others have barely touched it (mental note added). But overall, your students have covered the core concepts they learned last year.

To validate this information, you’d like them to elaborate on their mind maps to ensure they actually understand (rather than just remember) the concepts, so you write a few of the key ideas on the board and ask who would like to explain it. They seem to have a good grasp of membranes and nuclei, but even with plenty of hints, nobody can accurately describe what organelles do, or how the cells of plants and animals differ. You’ve identified two clear topics that need some refreshing, which you can either teach immediately or add to your next lesson plan.

These formative assessments may have taken no longer than 10 minutes. Of course, there needs to be a good balance between assessment and instruction, but that’s the beauty of formative assessments: they are quick and sharp and provide you with objective, real-world data that effectively directs your teaching. By incorporating formative assessments into your day-to-day teaching, you have vital feedback on student learning which you can use to identify and fill their knowledge gaps, build on their knowledge, and set them up for success.

Formative assessments help students become self-learners

Formative assessments have another effect on students that can improve their education and lives immeasurably: they help them become empowered self-learners (Clark, 2012). 3

This happens for two reasons:

They learn self-evaluation techniques

Many formative assessments have processes in which students assess their own work or the work of their peers. Rubrics are a good example. You can give students a marking rubric that allows them to assess their classmates’ abilities at reading aloud, as per below:

“By learning how to evaluate their own work, students develop the crucial meta-cognitive skills they need to progress by themselves.”

By using this rubric as a guide, they can score their classmates on volume, fluency, and clarity, and in the process, they also learn how to assess their own skills and pinpoint areas of weakness.

Informal debates are another example. You can create small groups of students and ask them to debate an issue in which they express their opinions, back them up with evidence, and listen to why their classmates agree or disagree. The conversations help them discover potential misconceptions or logical flaws, again teaching them (through modelling) how to evaluate such things by themselves.

By learning how to evaluate their own work, students develop the crucial meta-cognitive skills they need to progress by themselves. It’s giving them the proverbial fishing rod instead of a fish. They learn how to reflect, critique, review, and mark their own work, giving them a firm grip on their own learning and accelerating them to speeds far beyond what teachers can achieve by themselves. This leads to greater self-efficacy (Panadero et all., 2017) 4 and success.

They’re interactive and social

Formative assessments are highly varied, interactive tasks that students engage with during class. For most students, because the assessments are hands-on activities that require their attention, this makes them more interesting than standard instruction from the teacher. Students often become enthusiastically engaged in their learning, which creates a sense of agency and responsibility for their education. When combined with learning goals, this can be a powerful tool for improving outcomes.

Similarly, formative assessments can be co-operative social activities where students are encouraged to interact with their classmates and teachers. They might be having conversations with each other, validating their knowledge before and after learning, self-assessing using proven techniques, and many other activities (see our full list of assessment examples below) in which they are active and involved. As socially-driven creatures, this can turn your students’ learning from dull chores into genuinely fun experiences where they build friendships along the way.

2. Evidence that formative assessment works

“Teaching which incorporates formative assessment has helped to raise levels of student achievement, and has better enabled teachers to meet the needs of increasingly diverse student populations, helping to close gaps in equity of student outcomes.” 1

Formative assessments have been studied extensively, and show sweeping improvements for learning outcomes (OECD, 2008). 1

A comprehensive report on formative assessment by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), backed up by numerous studies, found the practice to be one of the most important interventions for promoting high [student] performance ever studied (OECD, 2008). 1 It’s the equivalent of taking students’ scores in an average performing country and lifting them into the top five best performing countries (Beaton et al., 1996, Black and Wiliam, 1998) 5,6 .

The OECD report shows that formative assessments:

• Make education more equitable . They lift the performance of every single student, including those who are underachieving.
• Improve school attendance . Formative assessments tend to be fun and engaging for students, which makes school much more enjoyable and reduces absence rates.
• Help students retain what they’ve learned. Assessments tap into the “testing effect” – a phenomenon in which the act of testing also boosts learning. Trying to recall information from memory is a highly effective way to learn (Brown et al., 2014). 9
• Help students become self-learners . They are more involved and engaged in the learning process itself, discovering the mechanics behind learning and self-evaluation and how they can do it themselves.
• Help to clarify misconceptions. These can be immediately corrected during learning, before they are consolidated into long-term memories during sleep (Klinzing, Niethard and Born, 2019). 11

Aside from the OECD report, there are numerous studies where formative assessment has proven its worth. A 2021 meta-analysis of 32 studies found that formative assessments boosted learning outcomes considerably (Karaman, 2021). 11 For the core foundational skill of Writing, another meta-analysis of formative assessment experiments found feedback to be a crucial part of the process. When teachers and peers gave feedback, and students self-evaluated their own work, writing quality was enhanced (Graham et al., 2015). 7

Another study found formative assessment to have a positive influence on literacy as well as maths and the arts. Helping students to self-assess provided one of the biggest benefits, as did providing written feedback on quizzes (Lee et al., 2020). 8 Feedback has proven to be a crucial part of effective formative assessment, and we cover this in more detail below. For Science, high school biology teachers who completed a professional development program on formative assessment saw their abilities increase for key areas such as interpreting student ideas, eliciting questions and providing feedback (Furtak, et all., 2016). 7

Finally, in a random sample of 22 Swedish Year 4 Mathematics teachers, researchers asked them to participate in a professional development program on formative assessment. After implementing their knowledge in their respective classes, their students significantly outperformed others (Andersson, Palm, 2016). 10

We could go on. There’s so much evidence of the efficacy of formative assessment. It’s amazing to think that such drastic improvements can be made by introducing effective formative assessments into your classrooms (we talk more about effective strategies below).

3. Formative assessment examples / types and how they work

Formative assessments are extremely diverse. They range from generic to subject/content-specific, allowing you to assess knowledge and skills in a variety of ways, and cover the full breadth of K-12. You can pick and choose which formative assessments suit your students based on their age and the covered content.

Their variety and spontaneity can make learning much more fun for students of all ages. These are some of the more common formative assessment examples you’ll find in schools across the world.

Age group: all

Quizzes are one of the most popular types of formative assessment, and for good reason: they’re fun, quick to create and mark, and give you a great indication of students’ general knowledge, learning gaps and possible misconceptions for a topic. They can be given as:

• Diagnostic pre-tests before starting a new unit
• Mid-unit checkups to determine whether learning is going according to plan
• Evaluative tests that check learning before the next unit starts
• Start or end of lesson check-ups to quickly assess learning

Quizzes typically contain multiple-choice questions , which make them nice and quick to mark. But they can take other forms if needed. You can also incorporate directive feedback into each quiz’s results to show students what they might do to improve.

Discussion boards

With discussion boards, students write what they know about a topic on the whiteboard. This could be as a mind map, graffiti wall, or another format, with students writing short words or phrases, full sentences, or even drawing pictures. It’s a brain-dump of sorts that helps you understand students’ depth of knowledge for a topic, and any potential learning gaps or misconceptions you need to address.

Brain dumps are the same as discussion boards but are completed on paper or screens, either individually or in small groups. Students write everything they know about a topic in the format they prefer, which gives you an idea of their knowledge for the topic.

Traffic light system

With the traffic light system, each student is given three coloured cards – one red, one orange and one green – which they need to hold up in response to a statement. Red is disagree, orange is unsure, and green is agree. You might ask them whether 10 times 10 is 200, whether day and night is created by the moon, or whether the word “running” is a verb.

When students hold their cards up, you get a visual gauge of how many students answered correctly. It’s another super-quick, fun formative assessment for younger students.

Questions / surveys

These are the simplest formative test of all: you ask questions to the class and assess their answers on the spot. They’re a staple of teaching around the world because they give you an ultra-fast idea of what your students know about the content already taught, so that you can refresh their memories if needed. You’ll be able to gauge their knowledge from the numbers of hands raised and the quality of answers (keeping in mind the general shyness of that particular class).

Rubrics / self-evaluation

Age group: Years 3 to 10

When students learn how to assess their own work, they’re on the road to becoming self-learners who can develop a fully-fledged love of learning. Rubrics are a formative assessment that helps them on this path. They’re a simple marking criteria that students can apply to their own (or their classmates’) work to judge their performance, and what improvements they might need to make.

As already touched on previously, an example is the reading rubric shown below. Students can listen to their classmates read aloud, give them a score for each skill, and then discuss why they gave them afterwards. The rubric is one of many tools that students can use to self-evaluate and become enthusiastic independent learners.

KWL charts are a formative assessment that prepare your students for what they’re going to learn, get them invested in their own learning, and help them evaluate whether learning was successful.

Three columns are drawn on the board in class, from left to right:

• What I know
• What I want to know
• What I learned

For the content being taught in today’s class, students are invited to write about what they know about it, and what they want to know about it. They complete the “what I learned” third column at the end of class, showing them whether they achieved their desires/objectives. This is another simple, effective way for students to assess their own learning.

You can include an additional section if you wish – how will you learn it (which makes it KWHL). This encourages students to think about how to research and discover the information.

Think-Pair-Share

Age group: Years 1 to 9

With Think-Pair-Share, students write down their responses to a question and then discuss their answers with a partner. You walk around the room and listen to their discussions, to gauge their level of understanding of the topic. Finally, they share their answers with the class, which encourages them to reflect on the accuracy and logic of their own.

See, Think, Wonder

Age group: Years 1 to 5

See, Think, Wonder is a formative assessment that stimulates students’ curiosities and really gets them thinking about an image. They are given a photograph or picture and sheets with three columns that must be filled out:

• See – they describe what they see using descriptive language
• Think – they describe what they think is going on with the image
• Wonder – they write anything they’re wondering about the image

The task shows you the quality of their writing, their interpretation skills, their creativity, the accuracy of their observations, and more. Once done they can discuss their answers with students at their table, which encourages teamwork, or read them to the entire class.

Thumbs up or down

This is another quick and easy assessment that reveals general misconceptions. You offer a statement and ask them to give a thumbs up if they agree, and a thumbs down if they disagree. By judging the accuracy of their answers, you’ll know whether common misconceptions are present and resolve them if so.

For the statements, it can be a good idea to use any that your prior students have struggled with in the past.

Hot seat questioning

Hot seat questioning is an assessment that makes questions a little more fun. Anonymous questions are placed on a selection of seats, typically in front of class, and students are invited to select a seat, read the question aloud, and then try to answer. The rest of the class are encouraged to discuss the students’ answer and provide their own if appropriate.

The questions can vary in difficulty depending on the subject and year level. It can be an engaging, fun way to assess student learning and stimulate discussion.

Entry & exit slips

Age group: Years 1 to 6

Entry and exit slips are a simple form of pre- and post-tests, helping you understand whether content was successfully learned. Students fill out an entry slip with a question like “How does heat transfer?” and then an exit slip with the same question. This helps them to compare their knowledge before and after the lesson, which can be extremely satisfying and motivating. You can also check their answers for accuracy once the lesson is over and discover learning gaps or misconceptions that need to be addressed.

One-minute papers

At the end of the lesson, students are given a minute to answer a question that summarises what has been learned. For example: how does hardware and software allow people to interact with computers?

After quickly reviewing their papers, you’ll have a sense of how well they’ve remembered and understood the content, and whether you need to go over it again in the next lesson.

The limited time given to complete this task can make it stressful for some students, which impairs its accuracy. You can relax every student by telling them they have a minute, but that they can also take some extra time if they need.

Muddiest point

With the muddiest point assessment, students are asked to write down what they were most confused about after a lecture or other activity. You can select random students to discuss their answers with the class, have them talk about their answers between themselves, or review their answers once the class is over. If you notice common confusions/misunderstandings, you’ll want to address them in a future lesson.

Informal debates

Age group: Years 5 to 12

Informal debates between groups of two or more students can be a great way to gauge their understanding of a topic. You can assign each group member a position in the debate, ask them to present evidence of their viewpoints to each other, and have them respond in turn. It works best for more “subjective” subjects that can lack concrete explanations or viewpoints, like literature, the arts, or social sciences.

This assessment tool really taps into students higher-order thinking skills, with each side bringing their arguments, supportive reasoning and passion to the conversation.  

Anticipation guides

Age group: Years 3 to 9

Anticipation guides are a tool that help you discover misconceptions for students. You present them with a statement like “Products have minimal impact on the earth’s environment,” and ask them write down whether they agree with the statement before the lesson begins. Once the lesson is over, you ask them to respond to the same question.

Their answers will tell you whether they have absorbed your instruction, and can also vividly demonstrate the value of teaching to them – “in the past hour I’ve learned something new and important!”

Kids love moving their bodies, and you can use this to your advantage by asking them to “act out” certain processes in class. For example, if you want to know whether they’ve understood how gas, liquids, and solids behave differently, you can clear a space and ask them to (safely) demonstrate how they might move if they were transformed into one of these states. Or you can ask them to form expressions for how a character might feel in a story.

This exercise is not only great fun (especially for younger children), it also communicates their understanding to you.

4. Formative assessment strategies for your school and classroom

Now that we’ve covered the what and why of formative assessment, it’s time to talk about some actual strategies that you can use to implement them at your school and execute them to a high standard.

Set up a formative assessment framework

“A framework will make your formative assessments structured, purposeful, frequent, and at less risk of being dropped in favour of ‘teaching to the tests’.”

Some teachers are pressured to achieve good grades on high-visibility summative assessments, and this can come at the cost of fewer formative assessments that actually improve student outcomes (OECD, 2008). 1

So it’s crucial to create a formative assessment framework that prioritises the tests, especially if they are regularly dropped in favour of summative testing. A framework will make your formative assessments structured, purposeful, frequent, and at less risk of being dropped in favour of “teaching to the tests,” especially if they are endorsed by the school leaders.

Thankfully, the OECD has completed extensive research on formative assessments , with real case studies on teachers who have successfully made them a part of their teaching and achieved strong learning outcomes for their students. These are some of their suggestions that can form the basis of your framework, adapted and summarised:

Establish a classroom culture that encourages interaction through formative assessments

Interaction is a big part of formative assessment. Students may find themselves thrusting their thumbs in the air, holding up coloured paper, drawing mind maps, having debates and more. These hands-on, collaborative types of assessment are not only more engaging for students, but it’s showing them that learning can (and should) be fun – even for the teenagers!

Make formative assessments an integral part of your classroom culture. Factor them into your lesson plans and get every student involved. Demonstrate that the tasks themselves are important because they teach them to become more self-aware, more empathetic and cooperative with their classmates, more able to make decisions, and better equipped to assess their own work. Show them, over and over, that formative assessments are not necessarily about getting a top score or beating their classmates. They’re about carving out a path for your teaching while giving them the tools they need to become fully-fledged, self-learners. Get parents involved too and try to convince them of the value of formative assessment – it should be an easy sale!

There is no such thing as “failure” with formative assessments, and with every new one completed, students will start to realise this and become more confident and happier to take risks.

Create challenging learning goals for students and track their progress, together

Goal-setting is a long proven technique for achieving better outcomes, both inside and outside the classroom. Setting challenging goals has shown to improve task performance, boost work output, and regulate choices in favour of completing the goal (Locke et al., 1968). 12

In the context of formative assessments, goals should relate to mastery, not marks. Your students may create learning goals to improve their reading comprehension, to master their multiplication tables, or to run simple science experiments with clear predictions, conclusions and evaluations. With clear goals that have explicit, easy-to-understand success criteria, lessons can become more meaningful and students may find themselves more engaged in their learning – there’s a purpose and objective to what they’re doing. Rather than achieving an A+, it’s about becoming a more capable person. This can lead to greater intrinsic motivation, improved self-esteem, and a number of other benefits (OECD, 2008). 1

Work with your students to set learning goals that are personally meaningful to them. Have them print them off and stick them to their workbooks. For related lessons where learning goals are shared among students, ask them to quickly read their goals at the start of the lesson, and then when the lesson is over, get them to spend 30 seconds reflecting on their progress. Did they move a little closer? What might they do better next time? This is self-learning in action, and gives them the confidence and autonomy to become lifelong learners.

Use varied formative assessment methods to meet diverse student needs

Your students are all fantastically unique. Some thrive when asked to complete quizzes. Others enjoy reflecting on what they’ve learned. Some love going up to the board and writing or drawing what they know about something.

To cater to the various needs and preferences of your students, it pays to incorporate a variety of formative assessment methods into your day-to-day teaching. This not only makes things more fun for your students, it provides you with a broader, more accurate assessment of their skills and knowledge.

Involve students in the learning process

As previously discussed, one of the most incredible things about formative assessments is that they encourage students to become actively involved in their own education, teaching them self-learning strategies they can use to grow all by themselves. These “metacognitive” strategies are a fundamental soft skill that can make a big difference to their success at school and beyond.

Try to incorporate a good portion of formative assessments that teach students the value of learning and show them how to assess their own work. These include rubrics, KWL charts, entry/exit tickets and more.

Give feedback rather than marks

Marks are important to summative tests like exams, but when it comes to formative assessments, feedback is the name of the game. It’s essential for helping students self-learn. A mark is a solitary number that tells them almost nothing; high-quality feedback is rich, specific information that tells them where to go next. It can help students to feel more motivated, better equipped, and more confident, which can almost double their growth over the course of a year (Hattie and Temperley, 2007) 13 .

When offering feedback for formative assessments, try to ensure that it is:

• Timely – imagine if a driving instructor only provided suggestions after you’d got out of the car? They’d be nowhere near as effective. Our short-term memories are exactly that – short – and we are much more capable of actioning feedback if it’s delivered immediately when the tasks are still fresh in our minds. Work with your students’ short-term memories, not against them.
• Specific and constructive – what specifically did the student fail at, and how can they remedy the problem themselves? That’s what your feedback should focus on. Students need to know what they did wrong and what actionable steps they can take to fix it: key ingredients for self-learning. It may be that they can’t do this by themselves because they don’t know the content well enough, in which case it needs to be re-taught.
• Motivational – starting feedback by acknowledging students’ correct answers can make them more receptive to fixing their mistakes / filling their learning gaps. By telling them they’ve done well for certain questions, it can motivate them to do well for every A pat on the back can do wonders! You can also highlight what they’ve improved on since their last assessment, helping them to see that they’re progressing towards their learning goals.
• Where am I going?
• How am I going?
• Where to next?

When providing formative assessment feedback to students, it can be based on four different things:

• The activity – how well the task was understood or performed.
• The learning process – what the student needs to do to complete the task.
• Managing their learning – how the student might need to plan or self-monitor.
• Qualities – personal qualities that the student shows, like an aptitude for arithmetic.

And finally, if providing praise as part of your feedback, it goes without saying that you should never focus on their intelligence or natural abilities. It creates a fixed mindset that can really hinder their learning. 14 Instead, try to praise their effort.

Teach students how to assess their own work

Self-assessment is a key part of self-learning – a process that can work like high-powered fertiliser for students’ growth. When students are taught how to self-assess, they better understand how their answers are related to their learning goals, they’re invited to reflect on their efforts, and most importantly, they can identify what they need to do to produce better quality work.

As their teacher, you use pre-defined success criteria to assess the accuracy of their work, and they can use the very same criteria to assess themselves and their peers. As you complete the different types of formative assessment, demonstrate how you use the templates, checklists, or rubrics to mark their work, and how it shapes the judgment of what is considered high-quality. Give them samples of exemplary work and explain why it’s so good. Show them, again and again, how you use the criteria to discover potential gaps in their learning and the actions that might be taken to fill them. By modelling your own assessment and feedback processes, you help them become their own teachers.

When they get better at this important skill, students can spend time marking, discussing, critiquing and demystifying their assessment results, blossoming into self-directed learners who can take ownership of their education. You’re showing them that self-assessment is a vital part of the learning process and providing them with the tools they need to achieve great things.

The NSW Government provide some more extensive examples of how to teach students self-assessment techniques , which we highly recommend reading.

Vary formative assessments to meet students’ diverse needs

Student diversity is one of the biggest challenges to providing great education, and this extends to formative assessment. With so many different learning styles, preferences, levels of progress and subject matter, you’ll need to select a variety of assessment types to suit their needs. A quiz might make sense for one subject and group of students, an informal debate for another, KWL charts for younger children, etc. It all comes down to what you think might work best for the group and the content, which takes time and patience to figure out.

Practice and experimentation is key. In time, you’ll be a formative assessment master.

Always test for misconceptions before starting a new unit

Education is a series of building blocks, and if one of those blocks is the wrong size, it compromises the entire structure. Knowledge cannot be built upon if incorrect. If students have misunderstood how basic fractions work, they’re not going to be able to understand equivalent fractions later on.

Thankfully, formative assessments are ideal for diagnosing these kinds of misconceptions . Pretty much any formative assessment can be diagnostic. Whether you’re using surveys, hot seat questioning, or another type of assessment, you’ll quickly discover common misconceptions and remedy them before they can hamper students’ learning later on. And the best time to do this is before starting a new unit, when they’re about to learn fresh content. It’s the perfect time to repair those misshapen blocks of knowledge from the previous unit so you can confidently keep building.

Make students feel safe

Formative assessment can be engaging and highly interactive, so students need to participate for it to work. But this won’t happen unless they feel safe.

Creating a safe learning environment is a big topic, but here are some effective tips you can use to make students feel secure in your classroom, and coax each of them out of their shells:

• Lay down ground rules – make it absolutely clear that there will be no laughing, teasing, or name calling in class, and that transgressions will be punished. These kinds of hurtful interactions can be burned into students’ memories and really hold them back. Make your class a judgment-free zone and enforce a strict zero-bullying policy.
• Be trustworthy – consistently treat your students with kindness, respect and a “fair but firm” attitude, and you’ll quickly win their trust. They’ll feel much safer to participate when they know the authority in the room has their back. This is especially important for the students who are particularly withdrawn or emotional, and may have a turbulent life at home. Your classroom could become their precious safe place.
• Explain the importance of mistakes – every mistake is an opportunity for the student to recognise the error, figure out where they went wrong, and do it right next time. There’s no growth without mistakes – they’re a sign that your students are pushing themselves!
• Incorporate brief social-emotional activities – brief activities like daily greetings, checking in with emotions and gratitude lists can help your students express their emotions to their peers, build stronger empathy skills, and feel emotionally safe in your class.
• Post their work around the class – most of us love to be celebrated for our achievements, and you can do this for your students by posting their great work on the classroom’s walls. It’s a visual reminder that they are skilled and capable.
• Explain why you’re giving an assessment – for formative assessments that can feel high-stakes, like quizzes or one-minute papers, briefly explain why it’s important, and remind them that there are no consequences for wrong answers.
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• Hattie, J & Timperley, H, 2007, The Power of Feedback , Review of educational Research Vol. 77
• Carol Dweck, 2006, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, Random House

Nardin is a former primary school teacher of 10 years. During her time as a teacher, she served as Head of Years for K-2, was a trained NAPLAN marker, and was part of the team that wrote the 2021 NSW English Syllabus 3-6. She is currently an assessment consultant for ICAS and Reach.

Tag: formative assessments

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Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence

Formative assessments.

Nicole Messier, CATE Instructional Designer February 4th, 2022

WHAT? Heading link Copy link

Formative assessments occur before, during, and after a class session and data collected is used to inform improvements to teaching practices and/or student learning and engagement.

• Formative assessments are beneficial to instructors by helping them to understand students’ prior knowledge and skills, students’ current level of engagement with the course materials, and how to support students in their progression to achieve the learning objectives.
• Formative assessments are beneficial to students by providing them with immediate feedback on their learning as well as opportunities to practice metacognition, which is an awareness of one’s own knowledge and thinking processes as well as an ability to self-monitor one’s learning path (e.g., self-assessment of learning) and adapt or make changes to one’s learning behaviors (e.g., goal setting).

Formative assessments can be viewed through two broad assessment strategies: assessments for learning and assessments as learning.

• Assessment for learning (AfL) provides the instructor an opportunity to adapt their teaching practices to support current students’ needs through the collection of data as well as provide practice, feedback, and interaction with the students.
• Assessment as learning (AaL) provides student ownership of learning by utilizing evidence-based learning strategies, promoting self-regulation, and providing opportunities for reflective learning.

Want to learn more about these assessment strategies? Please visit the Resources Section – CATE website to review resources, teaching guides, and more.

Non-Graded Formative Assessments (AfL & AaL) Heading link Copy link

Non-graded formative assessments (afl & aal).

Non-graded formative assessments can be used to examine current students’ learning and provide an opportunity for students to self-check their learning.

• Before class, questions can provide students with an opportunity to self-assess their learning as well as provide instructors with information for adapting their instruction.
• During class, questions can provide a platform for discussion, interaction, and feedback.
• After class, questions can provide students with opportunities to reflect, self-assess, and use retrieval practice .
• Questions to gauge understanding of content in the video.
• Think-pair-share – asking students to turn to their neighbor in class or small breakout groups in an online discussion and share their thoughts, ideas, or answers to a topic or question.
• Muddiest point – asking students to identify a topic or theme that is unclear, or that they do not have confidence in their knowledge yet.
• Three-minute reflection – asking students to pause and reflect on what they have learned during class (e.g., shared in a survey tool like Google Form , or in a discussion tool like Acadly ).
• Asynchronous online sharing and brainstorming using Blackboard discussion boards or EdTech tools like Jamboard or Padlet.

Polling and video questions can be designed as assessment for learning (AfL) by gathering data for instructors to adapt their lectures and learning activities to meet students where they are or to provide opportunities for students to reflect on their learning. In-class activities such as think-pair-share and muddiest point or asynchronous sharing can be designed as assessment as learning (AaL) by providing opportunities for students to self-assess their learning and progress.

Example 1 - Polling Questions Heading link Copy link

Example 1 - polling questions.

An instructor wants to determine if students understand what is being discussed during the lecture and decides to create an opportunity for students to reflect and self-assess. The instructor designs a Likert scale poll where students are asked to rank their understanding of concepts from 1 – extremely muddy (no understanding of the concept) to 5 – ready to move on (a clear understanding of the concept). Based on student responses the instructor decides to revisit a muddy concept in the next class as well as provides additional resources via the course site on the concept to support student learning.

The instructor also encourages students to revisit concepts that they scored a three or lower on and write down questions about the concepts to share before the next class. The instructor decides to continue using the poll and the collection of questions on important concepts in the upcoming units. The instructor will utilize these questions throughout the term to support student learning.

This formative assessment example demonstrates assessment for learning (Afl) and assessment as learning (AaL) by collecting data to adapt instruction as well as provide students with the opportunity to self-assess.

Polling questions can also be used to verify that pre-class work was completed, as a knowledge check while taking attendance, as a quick confirmation of understanding while lecturing, or as an exit poll before leaving class (on-campus or synchronous online).

Non-graded formative assessments can be adapted to provide extrinsic motivation by awarding students credit if they achieve a certain percentage of correct answers (e.g., students complete at least 70% of the questions correctly to receive full credit). This type of extrinsic motivation shifts the focus from the students’ ability to answer the questions correctly to promoting self-assessment, practice, and goal setting.

Graded Formative Assessments (AfL & AaL) Heading link Copy link

Graded formative assessments (afl & aal).

Just like non-graded formative assessments, graded formative assessments can be used to examine current students’ learning and provide an opportunity for students to gauge their learning. Graded formative assessments should provide students with opportunities to practice skills, apply knowledge, and self-assess their learning.

• One-minute essay – asking students to write down their thoughts on a topic at the end of a lecture.
• Concept map – asking students to create a diagram showing relationships between concepts.
• Authentic assessments – an assessment that involves a real-world task or application of knowledge instead of a traditional paper.
• Reflections, journals, self-assessment of previous work
• Discussion forums – academic discussions focused on a topic or question.
• Group work or peer review
•  Video questions using EdTech tools like Panopto or Echo360 .

Formative assessments like in-class work, written assignments, discussion forums, and group work can be graded with a rubric to provide individualized feedback to students. Video questions using EdTech tools like Panopto or Echo360 and quizzes using Blackboard Tests, Pools, and Surveys can be automatically graded with immediate feedback provided to students.

Example 2 - Written Assignment Heading link Copy link

Example 2 - written assignment.

An instructor decides to create four formative written assessments to measure student learning and provide opportunities for students to self-assess and self-regulate their learning. These written assignments are designed to assess each of the learning objectives in the course. Students are required to find new evidence by performing research based on the aligned learning objective(s) in each assignment. In the first written assignment, students are provided with a rubric to self-assess their work and submit their self-assessment and work. The instructor provides personalized feedback using the rubric on their work and self-assessment. In the second and third written assignments, students are asked to submit their work and provide a review of their peers’ work using a rubric. The instructor provides feedback on the peer review only. In the fourth assignment, the students are asked to select one of the previous pieces of work and make revisions as well as write a reflection on the knowledge and skills that were developed by completing a self-assessment and two peer reviews.

This formative assessment example demonstrates the importance of feedback in improving student performance and learning. This example could come from a writing, research, or humanities course where students are expected to produce narrative, argumentative, persuasive, or analytical essays. These written assignments could also be in major coursework and be more authentic (involves a real-world task or application of knowledge instead of a traditional paper), for example, developing a memo, proposal, blog post, presentation, etc. 

Formative assessments are used to provide opportunities for practice, feedback, and interaction ensuring students are active learners, instead of passive recipients of the information. In an active learning environment, student engagement, motivation, and outcomes are improved through the implementation of formative assessments. Students participate in meaningful learning activities and assessments that promote self-regulation, provide practice, and reinforce skills in an active learning environment.

Want to learn more about active learning strategies? Please visit the  Resources Section – CATE website to review resources, teaching guides, and more.

WHY? Heading link Copy link

Why develop formative assessments in your course?

Since the late 90s, Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam have been challenging the view that summative assessment is the best way to measure learning and support student success. Black and Wiliam’s research on formative assessment and student achievement started the shift from a summative focus to a more balanced view of assessment for student success.

Studies have shown that students who participate in formative assessments have improved overall performance and higher scores than students who do not participate in the formative assessments (Robertson, 2019) .

Impact on Students Heading link Copy link

Impact on students.

Students who participate in formative assessments develop and improve several essential skills (Koka, 2017) including:

• Communication skills
• Collaboration skills
• Problem-solving skills
• Metacognition
• Self-regulation skills

Student involvement, self-reflection, and open communication between faculty and students during formative assessments are vital to student success (Koka, 2017). Effective formative assessments include (Black, 2009):

• “Clarifying and sharing learning intentions and criteria for success,
• Engineering effective classroom discussions and other learning tasks that elicit evidence of student understanding,
• Providing feedback that moves students forward,
• Activating students as instructional resources for one another,
• Activating students as the owners of their own learning.”

Use of EdTech Tools Heading link Copy link

Use of edtech tools.

Studies have shown that using EdTech tools for formative assessments improves the immediacy of scores and feedback to students. Student wait time and faculty workload are dramatically reduced by the utilization of EdTech tools (Robertson, 2019). The use of EdTech tools for formative assessments also improves student satisfaction, enjoyment, and engagement (Grier, 2021; Mdlalose, 2021). EdTech tools can be used for synchronous and asynchronous formative assessments; however, synchronous formative assessments can allow the instructor to clarify misconceptions and help foster more engagement during discussions to create a learning community (Mdlalose, 2021).

In a study and literature review by Robertson and Humphrey (2019), they determined elements needed for formative assessment tools to be effective, including timeliness of feedback, elaborative feedback from the instructor, personalized feedback for students, reusability (reusing existing questions or content), accessibility (does the use of the tool exclude some students), interface design (how easy it is to implement), interaction (does it improve the frequency of interactions between student and instructor), and cost (funded by the institution or personal expense). These elements should be taken into consideration as you determine which EdTech tool(s) to use for formative assessments.

Feedback & Formative Assessments Heading link Copy link

Feedback & formative assessments.

A critical component of any formative assessment is the timeliness of feedback. Studies have shown that it is the immediacy of feedback that is most beneficial to student learning (Robertson, 2019) . As you begin to design formative assessments or select an EdTech tool to develop a formative assessment, make sure to determine how you will provide feedback to students.

Reflect on the following questions regarding feedback and formative assessments:

• How will you ensure that feedback to students is timely?
• How will you design multiple opportunities for feedback interactions with you and/or among peers?
• How will you distribute feedback interactions throughout the course?
• How will you provide personalized feedback to students?

Want to learn more about grading and feedback? Please visit the Resources Section – CATE website to review resources, teaching guides, and more.

HOW? Heading link Copy link

How do you start designing formative assessments?

First, you can review your course outcomes and learning objectives to ensure alignment of the formative assessments developed. Formative assessments can help measure student achievement of learning objectives as well as provide students with actionable feedback and the instructor with data to make decisions on current teaching and instruction practices.

So how do you determine what type of formative assessment to design? Or the frequency and distribution of formative assessments in your course? Let’s dive into some of the elements that might impact your design decisions, including class size, discipline, modality, and EdTech tools .

Class Size Heading link Copy link

Formative assessments can be designed and implemented in any course size from small seminar courses to large lecture courses. The size of the class will influence the decisions that instructors make regarding the use of EdTech tools to deliver formative assessments.

Small Class Size

• May allow for more formative assessments distributed throughout the course.
• May allow for more immediacy of feedback and descriptive, personalized, or dialogic feedback from the instructor.

Large Class Size

• May require instructors to utilize EdTech tools to deliver formative assessments that are distributed throughout the course.
• May require instructors to utilize EdTech tools to deliver timely, consistent, and helpful feedback to students.

Discipline Heading link Copy link

Formative assessments can be implemented in any type of course or program. A few considerations when developing formative assessments:

• To understand students’ prior knowledge and skills.
• As learning for students to reflect and self-regulate their learning.
• To measure achievement of learning objectives.
• To collect data to make decisions about teaching and instruction.

In undergraduate general education coursework, instructors should consider using formative assessments to understand student goals and motivations for taking a course and how to support their goals (future learning and connection to future career) and sustain their engagement in a course that may not be directly or obviously related to the major program of study. In major coursework, instructors might want to consider using formative assessments to reinforce knowledge and practice skills needed for summative assessments and external accreditation or licensure exams.

Modality Heading link Copy link

The modality of your course will influence the planning and delivery of formative assessments. Formative assessments can be designed for both synchronous and asynchronous delivery for any course modality.

Synchronous formative assessments (during scheduled classes) can be administered in on-campus, online synchronous, hybrid, and synchronous distributed courses. For example, creating in-class polls or surveys using an EdTech tool like Acadly and   iClickers .

Asynchronous formative assessments (outside of scheduled classes) can be administered in any type of course; however, asynchronous formative assessments are vital for online asynchronous courses to measure and reinforce learning. For example, creating weekly or unit quizzes in Blackboard using the Tests, Pools, and Surveys to reinforce student learning of the content.

Formative Assessment Tools Heading link Copy link

Formative assessment tools.

EdTech tools can help to reduce faculty workload by providing a delivery system that reaches students before, during, and/or after class sessions

Below are EdTech tools that are available to UIC faculty to create and/or grade formative assessments for and as learning.

Video and Questions Tools Heading link Copy link

Video and questions tools.

• VoiceThread

Asynchronous formative assessment tools like videos with questions can help you provide opportunities for students to self-assess learning, receive feedback, and practice.

Questions, Surveys, and Polling Tools

•   iClickers
• Blackboard surveys and quizzes
• Google forms
• Poll Everywhere

Question or polling tools can be administered synchronously to check understanding during a lecture in on-campus or online synchronous courses. Many of these tools can also be used asynchronously by providing a link in the course materials or announcements in the learning management system (LMS) – Blackboard .

Assessment Creation and Grading Tools

• Blackboard assignments drop box and rubrics

Assignments and scoring rubrics can be created in Blackboard for students to practice skills, receive feedback, and make revisions. Formative assessments can be created within Gradescope, or you can score in-class work using AI technology to reduce grading time, provide consistency in grading, and give general as well as personalized feedback to students.

Want to learn more about these formative assessment tools? Visit the EdTech section on the CATE website to learn more.

GETTING STARTED Heading link Copy link

Getting started.

The following steps will support you as you examine current formative assessment practices through the lens of assessment for learning (AfL) and assessment as learning (AaL) and develop new or adapt existing formative assessments.

• Consider creating an outline of the course and determine when a learning objective is covered and should be assessed.
• To collect data for decision-making about teaching and instruction (AfL).
• To provide students opportunities for practice and feedback (AfL and AaL).
• To promote self-regulation and reflective learning by students (AaL).
• To provide differentiation for students to improve individual learning and performance (AfL).
• Format: in-class work, question(s), written assignment, etc.
• Delivery: paper and pencil, Blackboard, EdTech tool, etc.
• Feedback: general (how to improve performance), personalized (student-specific), etc.
• Scoring: graded, non-graded, participation points, or extra credit.
• The fourth step is to review data collected from formative assessment(s) and reflect on the implementation of the formative assessment(s) to inform continuous improvements for equitable student outcomes.

CITING THIS GUIDE Heading link Copy link

Citing this guide.

Messier, N. (2022). “Formative assessments.” Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence at the University of Illinois Chicago. Retrieved [today’s date] from https://teaching.uic.edu/resources/teaching-guides/assessment-grading-practices/formative-assessments/

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES Heading link Copy link

Additional resources.

Academic Planning Task Force. (2020). Guidelines for Assessment in Online Learning Environments .

Clifford, S. (2020). Eleven alternative assessments for a blended synchronous learning environment. Faculty Focus.

Crisp, E. (2020). Leveraging feedback experiences in online learning. EDUCAUSE

Dyer, K. (2019). 27 easy formative assessment strategies for gathering evidence of student learning. NWEA .

Gonzalez, J. (2020). 4 laws of learning (and how to follow them). Cult of Pedagogy .

Weinstein, Y., Sumeracki, M., Caviglioli, O. (n.d.). Six strategies for effective learning. The Learning Scientists .

Agarwal, P. (n.d.) Retrieval practice website

Hattie, J. (n.d.) Visible Learning website

Weinstein, Y., Sumeracki, M., Caviglioli, O. (n.d.). The Learning Scientists. 

Wiliam, D. (n.d.) Dylan Wiliam’s website

REFERENCES Heading link Copy link

Black, P., Wiliam, D. (2009). Developing the theory of formative assessment. Educational Assessment Evaluation and Accountability. 21. 5-31. 10.1007/s11092-008-9068-5.

Earl, L.M., Katz, S. (2006). Rethinking classroom assessment with purpose in mind – Assessment for learning, assessment as learning, assessment of learning. Winnipeg, Manitoba: Crown in Right of Manitoba .

Grier, D., Lindt, S., Miller, S. (2021). Formative assessment with game-based technology. International Journal of Technology in Education and Science . 5. 193-202. 10.46328/ijtes.97.

Koka, R., Jurane-Bremane, A., Koke, T. (2017). Formative assessment in higher education: From theory to practice. European Journal of Social Sciences Education and Research . 9. 28. 10.26417/ejser.v9i1.p28-34.

Mdlalose, N., Ramaila, S., Ramnarain, U. (2021). Using Kahoot! As a formative assessment tool in science teacher education. International Journal of Higher Education . 11. 43-51. 10.5430/ijhe.v11n2p43.

Robertson, S., Humphrey, S., Steele, J. (2019). Using technology tools for formative assessments . Journal of Educators Online . Volume 16, Issue 2.

Weinstein, Y., Sumeracki, M., Caviglioli, O. (2019). Understanding how we learn – A visual guide. Routledge .

• Teaching Tips

20 Formative Assessment Examples To Use In Your College Classroom

Informal assessments are an easy way to stay connected with your students and understand their progress in your course

Top Hat Staff

Formative assessments are where students are quizzed periodically throughout a learning unit. Unlike traditional assessments, these insights provide you with regular and reliable feedback on student progress. Whether it’s polls , discussions , debates or reflections, frequent, low-stakes assessments let students apply what they have learned thus far. At a time when students place increased value on frequent feedback from their educators, facilitating regular assessments is essential. Below, we share:

• What formative assessments are
• What the differences are between formative and summative assessments
• How to engage students with formative and summative assessments
• The tools you’ll need to run formative assessments
• The benefits of formative assessments

20 formative assessment examples for any course or discipline

What are formative assessments.

Formative assessments involve monitoring student progress regularly throughout a course so that educators can better gauge students’ learning gaps and address those early on. Basic formative assessment strategies may include concept maps, responses posted to a discussion board and an ungraded quiz or poll.

Watch the video below to learn how formative assessments in the classroom can benefit both educators and students. You’ll also get assessment ideas that Leslie Sprunger, Associate Dean for Professional Programs in the Faculty of Integrative Physiology and Neuroscience at Washington State University, uses in her own courses.

How to engage students with formative assessments

Well-designed assessments encourage students to prioritize intellectual growth, while equipping them with marketable skills for their future careers. There are three main types of assessments instructors can incorporate into their higher educations courses.

• Assessments as learning opportunities: The best assessments are educational opportunities in which students can practice different methods of synthesizing, analyzing, and communicating what they have learned. There are many ways students can demonstrate mastery of the course content that go beyond traditional papers, quizzes and examinations. Giving students choice in how they express their knowledge, such as unessays, short films, collaborative blogs and field work also enables students to build their personal portfolios and resumes.
• Assessments that are self-reflective: Rather than objective assessments, instructors can create opportunities for students to reflect on their own progress. Consider asking students to students keep a journal throughout the class is a great way to create a record of their semester-long evolution. You can also ask students to evaluate their own work, as well as their peers. This way, instructors empower students to take ownership of the assessment process.
• Assessments that happen over time: One popular method is incorporating “scaffolding” into assessments. Instead of a paper worth a large proportion of the final grade, students submit several smaller assignments throughout the course of writing their paper, each worth a fraction of the overall grade and building towards the final product. For instance, they might first submit a topic and thesis statement, followed by their outline, then a rough draft, and then the final paper. This method provides students with feedback at various points, prioritizes the process of writing, and lowers the stakes for each graded piece of work.

Formative vs. summative assessment: The difference

Formative and summative assessments can easily be confused.  Summative assessment remains an essential part of every single college course being offered today. Despite its widespread use, however, an over-reliance upon it can turn the benefits into drawbacks:

• Every summative assessment is a high-pressure situation for students.
• Poor performance on an early assessment only increases the pressure on subsequent assessments. If a student earned a C on the midterm, they’ll feel the need to ace the final just to end up with a B.
• Poor performance on an early assessment undermines students’ confidence in their ability to perform better in the latter stages of the course. This creates an incentive to cheat: if they need to ace the final, they’ll find a way.

The best way to design any summative assessment is to make it an integral part of course planning.

Formative vs summative assessment: A structured approach

While formative assessment can take place informally through classroom discussion, it also benefits from a planned approach to its use. The challenge, for educators, is to strike the right balance between checking in on the progress of student learning and putting that learning to the test.

Choosing between formative and summative assessment for a particular course isn’t an either-or proposition. Formative assessment can’t substitute for traditional summative assessment, since exams and assignments remain essential as the best way to definitively measure student proficiency and assign a grade.

Some faculty who have embraced formative assessment choose to make the final exam worth 100 percent of their students’ grades, conducting formative evaluations throughout the semester to the point where come exam day, they and their students are confident of success. This formula probably wouldn’t work for every professor or every course, but it is a testament to the effectiveness of formative assessment, and to the value of making thoughtful use of both assessment types in every course you teach.

We share the key differences between formative and summative assessments in the table below.

Tools you can use to run formative assessments

Depending on what type of assessment you’re looking to run—whether a quiz or group discussion—the technology required will vary. Different disciplines, such as STEM or Humanities courses, may also require different formative assessment tools in order to run simulations or lab activities. 

That said, plenty of the 20 formative assessment strategies we share later in this post can also be facilitated with pen and paper or simple tech tools. If you’re looking to use ed tech to run your formative assessments, here are some platforms you may want to consider.

• Quizzes : Kahoot! , Quizlet , Socrative , Top Hat
• Video-based assessment : Animoto , Flipgrid , PlayPosit
• Discussions : Backchannel Chat , Discord , Top Hat (with anonymous discussion capabilities)
• Whiteboard or note taking tools : Dotstorming , Padlet , Limnu  
• Tools for STEM classes : BeyondLabz , Labster , Top Hat Labs
• Tools for Humanities classes : Annotation Studio , Audacity , Canva , Top Hat

Assessing course-related skills and knowledge

These formative assessment examples help evaluate learning of a given subject’s content by assessing student understanding and information recall from previous courses. Assessing this knowledge is especially important for instructors at the beginning of the term, in order to provide a clearer understanding of how to proceed with course material.

1. Exit tickets/exit slips:

Rather than a formal assessment, students use exit tickets to answer one or more assessment questions at the end of a class period or online course module to demonstrate how well they’ve absorbed that particular lesson. Each question should focus on a single concept or skill taught in that lesson. Download your free exit ticket formative assessment template for your next course.

2. One-minute paper:

In this informal assessment example, students are prompted to write a short response answering two questions related to a given week’s course content. Responses to one-minute papers can also be posted in online discussion forums to spur conversation between students. Questions can be as simple as: What was the most valuable, important or useful thing you learned in the lesson? What key questions, problems or issues remain unresolved?

Are you looking to further assess students in and out of your classroom? Top Hat’s formative assessment capabilities can help. Facilitate the one-minute paper exercise in-app using an interactive discussion board. Platforms like Kahoot! and Socrative can also be used for running polls and discussions as a quick formative assessment example.

Developing critical thinking and analysis skills

Consider structuring formative assessment examples around the development of higher-order thinking skills that rely on metacognition. Various modes of analysis, including the ability to break down information, problems and questions help develop students’ critical thinking skills. Students who think critically become instinctual problem solvers in class, engineering creative solutions to solve complex real-world case studies.

3. Think-pair-share :

Students work together in pairs or small groups to answer a question or solve a problem related to an assigned reading. These groups can use dedicated chat channels built into active learning platforms to communicate and discuss their ideas. First, the instructor asks an assessment question regarding the text for students to think about. Next, students pair up with one or more fellow students to discuss the question and their thoughts on the possible answers. Finally, each pair or group shares their conclusions with the rest of the class.

4. Defining features matrix:

Students categorize concepts based on whether or not they contain certain defining features. This is particularly useful for assessing how fully students understand certain factors distinguishing various concepts from one another and how well they can analyze whether a particular concept fits a certain category.

5. Socratic seminar:

Students help one another apply the ideas, issues and values reflected in a course text through a group discussion. Ask students to annotate the text in advance of class in order to familiarize themselves with the key themes and ideas discussed. Pose a general question and encourage students to share their responses with the group. Another student then responds to the last thought that was shared.

Encouraging students to think creatively

Quick formative assessments can involve creative expression. The following examples of formative assessments are used to understand student abilities when synthesizing information. By instructing students to express themselves creatively, students have the opportunity to think outside the box.

6. Word journal:

This assessment is conducted in two parts. In the first part, the student summarizes an entire lesson in a single word. In the second part, the student composes a short statement of one or two paragraphs explaining why they chose that particular word to summarize the lesson. These can then be submitted to the instructor for feedback directly through content delivery platforms or your learning management system (LMS).

7. Invented dialogue:

This strategy is particularly useful for demonstrating how well students have synthesized various historical or literary personalities, settings or themes. In this assessment, students compose a fictional dialogue between two real or fictitious personalities that demonstrate the students’ understanding of the topic. Teachers can opt to instruct students to incorporate actual quotes from primary sources into the dialogue or to simply invent plausible quotes of their own based on their comprehension of the content.

Enhancing problem-solving skills

These formative assessment examples assess students’ problem-solving abilities, including their ability to recognize the various types of problems and any causes and appropriate techniques to solve them. Learners can also use the time to draw similarities between various features of different problems, reflect upon them and adjust strategies for solving them accordingly. They are an important component for every educator to have on their formative assessment checklist.

8. Documented problem solutions:

Similar to a show-and-tell exercise or a how-to article, students write down each step they went through in solving a particular problem. This helps instructors understand how a student goes about thinking through problems and may highlight student obstacles when efficiently solving different types of problems. A variation of this is to document the student’s problem-solving process through an audio-video recording of the student demonstrating their process.

9. Problem-and-solution type recognition:

Effectively solving any problem requires the ability to identify the type of problem and, subsequently, the most appropriate methods of solving it. Students are given a problem and must identify its type, such as routine or non-routine, well-defined or ill-defined, and the most likely type of solution to apply to it, such as algorithm, heuristics or trial and error. Students can answer these problems through a short-answer question and the results can be shown to the class using a word cloud display.

Assessing student performance and application abilities

These formative assessment examples assess students’ understanding of how to apply the knowledge they’ve learned to specific situations. These informal assessment examples can stand alone as “temperature checks” or can be a part of a longer assessment, such as a scheduled test or quiz .

10. Directed paraphrasing:

Students take a lesson and paraphrase it with a particular audience in mind. This not only helps to assess a student’s understanding of the topic, it also helps to assess their ability to reframe it in a way that people in a different context and setting can likewise understand and apply it.

11. Student-generated test questions:

As a form of role-reversal, students devise test questions and sample appropriate answers that demonstrate their ability to comprehend concepts that underlie assigned readings. Rather than simply requiring students to recall what they’ve read, it asks them to hone in on the key elements that would indicate to them another person’s full comprehension of the concepts.

Understanding student self-awareness, attitudes and values

These formative assessment examples engage students and motivate them to develop their own attitudes, values, opinions and self-awareness through course-related activities. The three quick formative assessments below can be used as an exercise to generate discussion amongst students and ensure learning continues once class is over.

12. Opinion polls:

Students indicate how much they agree or disagree with a particular prompt or statement. This assessment data can help educators see how comfortable students are with regard to key objectives of learning activities and with specific course content in particular.

13. Profiles of admirable individuals:

This assessment in the classroom involves asking students to write a brief biography of a real person involved in a relevant field that highlights the admirable characteristics making them a role model. Instructors can use polling features for students to vote on which expert in the field they would like to research.

14. Everyday ethical dilemma: Students answer how they would go about solving a common everyday ethical dilemma related to the course or their discipline.

Activities that help develop individual awareness of self as a learner

These formative assessment examples help students clarify and express their self-concept and personal goals in ways that connect to the course content.

15. Focused autobiographical sketch:

Students write a brief memoir-style essay describing a moment or episode of their lives during the course in which they felt like they successfully reached a learning outcome.

16. Goal-ranking:

Students list three to five goals of their own that serve as their learning goals of the course, then rank them in order of priority. At the end of the course, instructors can go back to this exercise and have students evaluate their rankings and/or assess how well they did achieving each goal they set. Using Top Hat’s heat map question functionality, instructors can show how the class performed as a group.

Understanding student learning behaviors, strategies and skills

These formative assessment examples help instructors assess students’ learning habits. They can help create a more tailored learning experience.

17. Productive study-time log:

Students keep a log of all the time they spent learning and studying for a given course and, alongside each entry, the quality of that time. This acts as a form of self-assessment because it helps both students and educators see how effectively students are making use of their study time.

18. Punctuated lectures:

After listening to a lecture, students reflect (in writing) on how well they were concentrating on the material and, by contrast, how often they became distracted. They may also note how they brought their attention back to the material, if at all, so they can arm themselves with these tools in future lectures. They can even add how the lecture met their expectations and how they connected the lecture to knowledge they already possess. This can be submitted through the class’s live chat while lectures are occurring, so students are able to view their peers’ thoughts and opinions.

Assessing student reactions to learning

These formative assessment examples help instructors assess how well students can identify the key points and learning outcomes of a given lesson. These formative assessment ideas will let students thoughtfully reflect on a given reading or artifact.

19. Feedback forms:

There are several ways to solicit weekly feedback from students after a lesson. Educators can pose a series of questions, or even a single question, about the lesson’s effectiveness. These can be multiple-choice, true/false, yes/no or open-ended questions.

Students compose a brief statement regarding a particular lesson written in the following format: Recall, Summarize, Question, Connect, Comment. This can also take place in a discussion forum, so students can comment on each other’s questions and ideas.

Formative and Summative Assessments. (n.d.). Yale Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning. https://poorvucenter.yale.edu/Formative-Summative-Assessments  

What is the difference between formative and summative assessment? (n.d.). Eberly Center at Carnegie Mellon University. https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/basics/formative-summative.html

50 CATS by Angelo and Cross. (n.d.). University of California, San Diego. https://vcsa.ucsd.edu/_files/assessment/resources/50_cats.pdf

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Created by the Great Schools Partnership , the GLOSSARY OF EDUCATION REFORM is a comprehensive online resource that describes widely used school-improvement terms, concepts, and strategies for journalists, parents, and community members. | Learn more »

Formative Assessment

Formative assessment refers to a wide variety of methods that teachers use to conduct in-process evaluations of student comprehension, learning needs, and academic progress during a lesson, unit, or course. Formative assessments help teachers identify concepts that students are struggling to understand, skills they are having difficulty acquiring, or learning standards they have not yet achieved so that adjustments can be made to lessons, instructional techniques, and academic support .

The general goal of formative assessment is to collect detailed information that can be used to improve instruction and student learning while it’s happening . What makes an assessment “formative” is not the design of a test, technique, or self-evaluation, per se, but the way it is used—i.e., to inform in-process teaching and learning modifications.

Formative assessments are commonly contrasted with summative assessments , which are used to evaluate student learning progress and achievement at the conclusion of a specific instructional period—usually at the end of a project, unit, course, semester, program, or school year. In other words, formative assessments are for learning, while summative assessments are of learning. Or as assessment expert Paul Black put it, “When the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative assessment. When the customer tastes the soup, that’s summative assessment.” It should be noted, however, that the distinction between formative and summative is often fuzzy in practice, and educators may hold divergent interpretations of and opinions on the subject.

Many educators and experts believe that formative assessment is an integral part of effective teaching. In contrast with most summative assessments, which are deliberately set apart from instruction, formative assessments are integrated into the teaching and learning process. For example, a formative-assessment technique could be as simple as a teacher asking students to raise their hands if they feel they have understood a newly introduced concept, or it could be as sophisticated as having students complete a self-assessment of their own writing (typically using a rubric outlining the criteria) that the teacher then reviews and comments on. While formative assessments help teachers identify learning needs and problems, in many cases the assessments also help students develop a stronger understanding of their own academic strengths and weaknesses. When students know what they do well and what they need to work harder on, it can help them take greater responsibility over their own learning and academic progress.

While the same assessment technique or process could, in theory, be used for either formative or summative purposes, many summative assessments are unsuitable for formative purposes because they do not provide useful feedback. For example, standardized-test scores may not be available to teachers for months after their students take the test (so the results cannot be used to modify lessons or teaching and better prepare students), or the assessments may not be specific or fine-grained enough to give teachers and students the detailed information they need to improve.

The following are a few representative examples of formative assessments:

• Questions that teachers pose to individual students and groups of students during the learning process to determine what specific concepts or skills they may be having trouble with. A wide variety of intentional questioning strategies may be employed, such as phrasing questions in specific ways to elicit more useful responses.
• Specific, detailed, and constructive feedback that teachers provide on student work , such as journal entries, essays, worksheets, research papers, projects, ungraded quizzes, lab results, or works of art, design, and performance. The feedback may be used to revise or improve a work product, for example.
• “Exit slips” or “exit tickets” that quickly collect student responses to a teacher’s questions at the end of a lesson or class period. Based on what the responses indicate, the teacher can then modify the next lesson to address concepts that students have failed to comprehend or skills they may be struggling with. “Admit slips” are a similar strategy used at the beginning of a class or lesson to determine what students have retained from previous learning experiences .
• Self-assessments that ask students to think about their own learning process, to reflect on what they do well or struggle with, and to articulate what they have learned or still need to learn to meet course expectations or learning standards.
• Peer assessments that allow students to use one another as learning resources. For example, “workshopping” a piece of writing with classmates is one common form of peer assessment, particularly if students follow a rubric or guidelines provided by a teacher.

In addition to the reasons addressed above, educators may also use formative assessment to:

• Refocus students on the learning process and its intrinsic value, rather than on grades or extrinsic rewards.
• Encourage students to build on their strengths rather than fixate or dwell on their deficits. (For a related discussion, see growth mindset .)
• Help students become more aware of their learning needs, strengths, and interests so they can take greater responsibility over their own educational growth. For example, students may learn how to self-assess their own progress and self-regulate their behaviors.
• Give students more detailed, precise, and useful information. Because grades and test scores only provide a general impression of academic achievement, usually at the completion of an instructional period, formative feedback can help to clarify and calibrate learning expectations for both students and parents. Students gain a clearer understanding of what is expected of them, and parents have more detailed information they can use to more effectively support their child’s education.
• Raise or accelerate the educational achievement of all students, while also reducing learning gaps and achievement gaps .

While the formative-assessment concept has only existed since the 1960s, educators have arguably been using “formative assessments” in various forms since the invention of teaching. As an intentional school-improvement strategy, however, formative assessment has received growing attention from educators and researchers in recent decades. In fact, it is now widely considered to be one of the more effective instructional strategies used by teachers, and there is a growing body of literature and academic research on the topic.

Schools are now more likely to encourage or require teachers to use formative-assessment strategies in the classroom, and there are a growing number of professional-development opportunities available to educators on the subject. Formative assessments are also integral components of personalized learning and other educational strategies designed to tailor lessons and instruction to the distinct learning needs and interests of individual students.

While there is relatively little disagreement in the education community about the utility of formative assessment, debates or disagreements may stem from differing interpretations of the term. For example, some educators believe the term is loosely applied to forms of assessment that are not “truly” formative, while others believe that formative assessment is rarely used appropriately or effectively in the classroom.

Another common debate is whether formative assessments can or should be graded. Many educators contend that formative assessments can only be considered truly formative when they are ungraded and used exclusively to improve student learning. If grades are assigned to a quiz, test, project, or other work product, the reasoning goes, they become de facto summative assessments—i.e., the act of assigning a grade turns the assessment into a performance evaluation that is documented in a student’s academic record, as opposed to a diagnostic strategy used to improve student understanding and preparation before they are given a graded test or assignment.

Some educators also make a distinction between “pure” formative assessments—those that are used on a daily basis by teachers while they are instructing students—and “interim” or “benchmark” assessments, which are typically periodic or quarterly assessments used to determine where students are in their learning progress or whether they are on track to meeting expected learning standards. While some educators may argue that any assessment method that is used diagnostically could be considered formative, including interim assessments, others contend that these two forms of assessment should remain distinct, given that different strategies, techniques, and professional development may be required.

Some proponents of formative assessment also suspect that testing companies mislabel and market some interim standardized tests as “formative” to capitalize on and profit from the popularity of the idea. Some observers express skepticism that commercial or prepackaged products can be authentically formative, arguing that formative assessment is a sophisticated instructional technique, and to do it well requires both a first-hand understanding of the students being assessed and sufficient training and professional development.

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17 Easy To Use Formative Assessment Examples To Develop Your Approach To Teaching and Learning

Zoe Benjamin

Here we’ve collected 17 formative assessment examples that can be easily incorporated into any lesson to quickly get individual feedback and then inform the next stage of tailored instruction to meet the unique needs of your students.

What are formative assessment examples?

How these formative assessment examples differ from summative examples, 1. low stakes quizzes , 2. mini whiteboards , 3. diagnostic questions , 4. problem pairs or example problem pairs, 5. examples and non-examples, 6. exit tickets or exit slips, 7. shadow tests, 8. comment-only marking.

Download an example of this kind of formative assessment: Worked Examples: Place Value

9. Metacognitive prompts 

10. one-minute papers, 11. always, sometimes, never, 12. directed questioning , 13. open-ended questions, 14. identifying misconceptions, 15. concept map, 16. mark scheme or rubric , 17. homework tasks, other formative assessment examples, common formative assessment misconceptions, formative assessment examples faqs.

Effective formative assessment can be achieved through a range of assessment techniques. Teachers can use many examples of formative asssessment even in a single lesson to evaluate students’ learning inform the next stage of teaching.

The formative assessment examples we’ve collected here will help you identify misconceptions and assess students’ needs so you can then adapt teaching accordingly to improve student progress. 

These formative assessment tools play a vital role in the learning process as they are employed to gather students’ responses, which in turn inform both present and future lesson plans.

Moss and Brookhart (2019) reported that when formative assessment strategies are in place within a classroom, teachers:

• share lesson objectives and success criteria with students.
• offer feedback that effectively moves students’ learning forward.
• are strategic with their questioning to assess students’ understanding.

At the same time, students:

• set goals and ask effective questions.
• undergo self-assessment and peer assessment regularly.

The differences between formative and summative assessments lies in their purpose , frequency , type and outcome .

Formative assessments serve the purpose of enhancing learning, whereas summative assessments aim to measure attainment, by providing a final grade. While formative assessments are conducted regularly throughout lessons, summative assessments take place at the end of a teaching-learning cycle. 

Typically, formative assessments have lower stakes, while summative assessments are likely to be high-stakes. Teachers provide feedback following formative assessments to facilitate learning improvement, while the outcome of a summative assessment is a final grade or score used as a measure of achievement.

Looking for your own summative maths tests?

The following are all free to download: Year 6 maths test Year 7 maths test Year 8 maths test Year 9 maths test

Diagnostic Year 6 Maths Quizzes

Download our free resource on diagnostic year 6 maths quizzes that you can use as formative assessment in your classroom.

17 formative assessment examples

Here are 17 ready to use examples of formative assessment for you to test out in your classroom.

Low stakes quizzes are a fundamental formative assessment example. They’re also one of the most powerful and easy ways to assess pupils’ prior knowledge and provide quick feedback to improve learning. They take between five and ten minutes at the start or end of class and can test one topic or a collection of topics. 

They can also be used as part of a well planned sequence of lessons to provide assessment on a given topic one week, one month and three months after it was initially taught. As well as spacing out the retrieval of learning like this, a low stakes quiz also provides an opportunity for interleaving topics together; for example, you could combine finding the area of a trapezium with Pythagoras and surds:

Mini whiteboards provide a quick, effective and low-stakes way to check whole-class understanding. To qualify as a formative assessment strategy, it must be followed by feedback to improve learning and students should have time to demonstrate the impact that the teacher’s feedback has had. 

Mini-whiteboards can be used to complement many of the examples listed below. Any task completed on a mini-whiteboard will be viewed as low-stakes by students because there will be no record of their response in an exercise book. 

Consequently, students are often more willing to take risks when using a mini-whiteboard and are more likely to commit to answering a question than if they were required to write it into their book.  

Be aware of the potential drawbacks to mini whiteboards such as students waiting and quickly answering when they see other answers. These can often be mitigated with good classroom behaviours and routines.

Diagnostic questions are closed, multiple choice questions with very carefully selected answer options. One is the correct answer, the others (sometimes called distractors) are carefully chosen to reveal different misconceptions.that have been carefully designed so that each incorrect answer relates to a specific misconception that can then be addressed by the teacher to improve learning. 

Diagnostic questions can take a long time to formulate but they are a fantastic resource that can be added to departments’ schemes of work for use year after year.

A key element of diagnostic assessment , diagnostic questions are becoming increasingly popular in mathematics lessons and there are many teachers online who are sharing their multiple-choice questions with the wider education community. 

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Third Space Learning’s online one to one maths tutoring is guided by diagnostic assessment. Each and every pupil’s learning journey is personalised to their specific learning gaps and misconceptions through the ‘kick off quiz’. The results of this assessment are used by the tutor to provide personalised support, ensuring gaps in learning and misconceptions are addressed.

‘Problem pairs’ is a very useful formative assessment example for the start of the learning process, particularly when the teacher is introducing a new skill. It involves writing two very similar examples or problems on the board, one for the teacher to complete and one for the pupils to complete. 

The teacher models a complete solution first and then all the students try to replicate the new skill independently using the other example. The teacher can use the students’ solutions to see whether they have mastered the new skill or if further teaching is required. Problem pairs can be completed on mini-whiteboards to make it easier for the teacher to get whole class feedback while standing at the front of the room. 

In Third Space Learning’s online one to one maths tutoring, lessons are broken down into 4 stages in an ‘I do, we do, you do’ structure. This encourages students to move from guided to independent practice. The ‘Your turn’ sequence allows students to work through a scaffolded example with the support of their dedicated tutor.

Sometimes the most effective way to know if students have understood a definition is to ask them to write down an example and a non-example using the definition. 

For example, a pupil could be asked to draw an example of a square and then draw a non-example of a square. This would enable the pupil to demonstrate that they know what a square is but also what a square is not. It takes an extra layer of thinking to understand the properties of something and then apply them to a non-example.

Correct examples are often easier to produce than correct non-examples, and students’ errors effectively highlight the nature of their misunderstanding, which can then be directly addressed by the teacher. 

In mathematics, a teacher could ask for an example and non-example of:

• Discrete data
• A prime number
• A quadratic equation with two positive roots

These are short low-stakes questions that are issued at the end of a lesson and often handed in as the pupil leaves the classroom. They are used to assess whether students have met the learning outcomes from the lesson to inform the teacher’s plan for the following lesson. 

In most cases, students won’t receive their exit tickets back; their purpose is to provide the teacher with feedback about whether the lesson’s learning objectives were achieved by the class. If the exit tickets reveal many incorrect answers, the teacher would need to address the misunderstanding with the class at the start of their next lesson.

Shadow tests allow students and teachers to test whether a teacher’s feedback following an assessment has been successful. A shadow test is a replica of another test but with slightly different questions. 

In maths, the questions in the test and shadow test could be identical other than the numbers that they used. After students have received and acted on the feedback from the original test, a shadow test can be used to test whether the teacher’s feedback has led to an improvement in understanding. 

Grades and scores are not necessary for formative assessment and research has shown that they are actually counterproductive at improving learning. When students receive a grade or score for a piece of work, they are significantly less likely to read or act upon their teachers’ feedback. 

For this reason, marking work by only giving written feedback and having a dedicated time for students to act upon this feedback can enable any piece of work to become an example of formative assessment.

Giving students metacognitive prompts to complete at the end of maths lessons has been shown to significantly increase students’ attainment compared to a randomised control group (Baliram & Ellis, 2019). 

The teacher in the study used the students’ responses to the following prompts to plan a ten-minute starter activity for the next lesson:

• ‘Today, I learned…’
• ‘I can now apply…to solve…’
• ‘I understand…but still don’t understand…’ 

These metacognitive strategies can be used to quickly gain feedback from students about how well they have understood and achieved the learning objectives and what can be done in the following next lesson to improve learning. 

• Metacognition in the classroom : A 7 step practical approach
• What is metacognition

One-minute papers (or brain dumps) require pupils to spend a short amount of time writing down everything they know on a given topic (e.g. angle properties). The purpose of this activity is to assess prior knowledge so that the teacher knows where they need to begin teaching the new topic. 

Below is an example.

‘Always, sometimes, never’ is an excellent activity that can uncover students’ misconceptions quickly and allow the teacher to move learning forward. It is particularly effective in maths where students can be presented with a simple statement and to decide (and justify) whether the statement is always true, sometimes true, or never true. 

Examples that work well are:

• Prime numbers are odd.
• a 3 is greater than a 2 .
• The sum of two even numbers is even. 

See more always sometimes never examples:

• How to achieve greater depth in maths
• 108 Always Sometimes Never Questions

It can be tempting, particularly in a mixed ability class, to only take answers from students who have raised their hands. The danger of this approach is that some students will not even attempt to answer questions, knowing that they won’t be called on if they don’t raise their hand. 

Having a ‘no hands up’ policy will instantly engage all students because they know that you could direct your question from anyone in the room. You can also utilise mini-whiteboards with this strategy by asking all pupils to put an answer on their board and then selecting one person to read out what they have written to the rest of the class. 

Open-ended questions can help teachers to understand students’ reasoning and thought processes, which allows them to better meet the needs of their pupils and improve learning. Even asking ‘why?’ or ‘what do you mean by…?’ can encourage students to expand their answers and uncover valuable information. 

In maths, you could remove the text from an exam question, leaving just the image, and ask pupils to write down anything they know or can work out about the image. This formative assessment example can also encourage pupils to start questions by writing down anything they know even when they are not sure how to answer the specific question they have been presented with. 

Another useful open-ended question that can be used in maths is ‘how many ways can you find to solve…’. This type of effective questioning works particularly well with simultaneous equations. Students might suggest the methods of substitution or elimination, trial and error, or drawing two graphs and seeing where they intersect.

Instead of using questioning to identify students’ maths misconceptions , teachers can present students with a mixture of facts and common misconceptions and ask them to separate them into the appropriate category.

An extension to this is to ask students to explain why each misconception is incorrect. 

This is similar to a one-minute paper but it explicitly encourages pupils to look for connections between topics. Students could draft their own concept map on a mini-whiteboard before contributing to a whole class version on the board. 

The purpose is to give feedback to the teacher about the students’ prior knowledge so that the new topic can be introduced at the most appropriate level. 

Exam boards will often provide examples of student work that can be used in class by students to test their understanding of the mark scheme or rubric provided by the exam board. 

The benefit of this activity is that it gives teachers feedback about whether students can recognise and understand the difference between the different assessment objectives. If they cannot identify correct responses in other students’ work, it is unlikely that they will be able to reproduce it in their own work.

Last, but not least, homework can be used as formative assessment in two important ways. Firstly, it can be used for teachers to check students’ understanding by producing work that can receive detailed formative feedback. 

Secondly, homework can be used for students to act upon their teacher’s formative feedback. For example, if a student forgets to subtract when using Pythagoras’ theorem to find one of the shorter sides of a triangle, their teacher could give them verbal feedback at the start of the next lesson to move their learning forward. 

The following week, that pupil could be given a sheet of mixed Pythagoras theorem problems to complete for homework to check that the verbal feedback has been effective.

Other formative assessment examples you may encounter are activities like Think pair share and Detective marking. We’ve not included them in our main list because both, for different reasons, can be difficult to manage effectively and thus take up classroom time that could be better used.

Think pair share where students work together to answer a question risks students just having a chat or one not admitting to their peer that they don’t understand and just ‘going along with’ the other’s answer.

Detective marking in which a teacher marks a test and writes down the number of correct answers without indicating which ones are correct will, for some students, just lead to confusion.

Knowing which formative assessment technique is likely to be successful with your class is a key part of being able to move the students forward as a result. It’s our recommendation therefore you try any of the other formative assessment examples on this list rather than these two.

1. Feedback in formative assessment is limited to teachers 

Formative assessment is about providing feedback to improve learning. It is important to remember that the feedback can come from students; it should not be limited to written and verbal feedback from teachers. 

Formative assessment can be used to tell a teacher that the lesson outcomes have not been achieved. In this case, learning improves by the teacher adapting a lesson plan or changing the type of instruction being used. 

2. Clickers, thumbs up/ down responses and emojis qualify as formative assessment

Using clickers or a thumbs up, thumbs down response to ‘does that make sense?’ or ‘does everyone know what to do?’ are not examples of formative assessment. 

Similarly, when students use emojis to indicate their mastery of a new topic, the teacher is not provided with useful information that can improve learning. 

These measures may be a useful reflection of students’ confidence but they are not an accurate reflection of learning and they provide no insight into what part of the learning process has been unsuccessful. 

Formative assessments should provide useful information that can be used by a teacher or a student to improve learning; if this is not the case, it is not an example of formative assessment.

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The purpose of formative assessment is to improve learning.

Summative assessment provides an assessment of learning, while formative assessment provides a way to improve learning. 

Formative assessment can provide feedback to teachers about students’ understanding or it can provide feedback to students about what they need to do to improve.

They allow teachers to check the understanding of every pupil in their class and adapt their teaching strategies if necessary.

Wiliam, D. and Leahy, S., 2016. Embedding formative assessment . Hawker Brownlow Education.

Moss, C.M. and Brookhart, S.M., 2019. Advancing formative assessment in every classroom: A guide for instructional leaders . ASCD.

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The ultimate formative assessment guide for teachers - Classroom tools, tips, and examples

Formative assessment is gaining importance in our classrooms. Evaluation is not just about a final grade anymore: it’s about pushing your students to get better learning outcomes; it’s about feedback, and growing.

Creating an effective teaching environment with formative assessment techniques and tools is important. In this formative evaluation blog post guide for teachers, I’ll show you everything you need to know about this topic.

This guide is divided into several chapters. Just click on the link below to jump to parts that interest you, or, if you’re new to formative assessment, just read everything. 👀

What is formative assessment?

• The differences between formative and summative assessment
• Types & examples of formative assessments
• Formative assessment tools

Formative assessment tips for teachers

How to give formative feedback.

The definition of formative assessment (or formative evaluation) is very clear: Formative assessment is an ongoing process of collecting information on the outcomes, strengths, and weaknesses of your students at any point in their learning process.

Teachers use this information to provide ongoing feedback to students when they are still learning. Feedback should be actionable, so students can use it to improve their learning.

The most important characteristic of formative assessment is that there are no grades! You don’t need to put a mark on a student to measure his capabilities.

The difference between formative and summative assessment

To show the differences between formative and summative evaluation, we’ve created a clear infographic for you.

Of course, I’ll spill the beans again, here.

Whereas the definition of formative assessment clearly states that it’s an ongoing process of collecting student information and providing feedback, summative assessment is used to evaluate students’ learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark.

• Difference 1: When does the assessment take place in a students’ learning process? That’s the first, and biggest difference between the two evaluation strategies. As you already know now, formative assessment is an ongoing activity. The evaluation takes place during the learning process. Not just one time, but several times. A summative evaluation takes place after the learning process when a course or unit is completed.
• Difference 2: What’s the information you get from your students’ learning process? With formative assessment, you try to figure out whether a student’s doing well or needs help by monitoring the learning process. When you use summative assessments, you assign grades. The grades tell you whether the student achieved the learning goal or not.
• Difference 3: What’s the purpose of both evaluation strategies? For formative assessment, the purpose is to improve students’ learning outcomes. For summative assessment, the purpose is to evaluate students’ achievements. In other words: do you want your students to be the best at something, or do you want your students to do better than before each time over and over again?
• Difference 4: What’s the size of the evaluation packages? Formative assessment evaluates your students’ knowledge of small content areas. For example, 3 formative evaluations of 1 chapter. Summative assessment asks students to test their knowledge of complete chapters or content areas. For example, just 1 evaluation at the end of a chapter. The lesson material package is much larger now.
• Difference 5: What’s the nature of the assessment? Formative assessment considers evaluation as a process. This way, the teacher can see a student grow and steer the student in an upwards direction. With summative assessment, it’s harder for you to guide the student in the right direction. The evaluation is already done. That’s why summative assessments or evaluations are considered to be more of a “product”.

You can also take a look at this page to learn more about using BookWidgets for formative and summative assessments.

Types and examples of formative assessments

There are many methods to formatively evaluate your students. I’ll sum up a few types, including a digital example of formative assessment.

As this is a technology blog for teachers, I will focus a bit more on the digital ways of formative evaluation. You’ll see that for every traditional method, there’s a digital one too, providing the teacher with even more useful statistics in your students’ learning processes.

You can find and adapt all the digital formative assessment examples in this BookWidgets group folder .

1. Exit Tickets

An exit ticket or exit slip is a sheet of paper or a digital activity with questions that each student answers individually at the end of the lesson.

The questions can be about the lesson content (what they liked about it, what they remember) , or about how they felt after the lesson. Exit slips will give you the information you need to help your students improve, and to help you understand how they feel at that exact moment.

There are hundreds of different exit slip types, which makes it a very strong formative assessment tool for all classes and all teachers.

Exit Ticket Example

We’ve created an exit ticket guide with over 60 digital, ready-to-use exit tickets for you to use immediately.

Check out the example below: Exit in 3, 2, 1

This exit ticket is created with BookWidgets, which also has a reporting dashboard for teachers. Here, you’ll see all the submitted results and you can quickly get the information you need, and provide feedback where needed.

2. Self-assessments

It will take practice and guidance to help the students understand the importance of a thorough self-evaluation.

Self-assessment example

There are many self-assessment strategies. Exit slips are one of them. Take a look at the list with exit tickets above. You’ll certainly find some good ones. Also, check out this post with some creative self-assessment ideas .

Here’s my favorite self-assessment example: The Traffic Light

Students have to reflect on the task and indicate where they’re at. Do they understand everything? Do they still need help? Are they stuck or completely disoriented? They have to indicate and color the traffic light green, orange or red. They also have to indicate why they choose that color.

3. Worksheets and quizzes

You can use, for example, the BookWidgets worksheet or quiz activity. With over 30 different question types, the possibility to add multimedia, and set up different scoring options, this is the ultimate formative evaluation activity you’ll be able to build.

Some unique formative assessment settings in the BookWidgets Worksheet or Quiz are:

• Immediately show students the correct answers when the activity is finished: this way, students know what they have correct and where they need practicing for improvement.
• Immediately color correct student answers green: students can keep trying and dig deeper in their brain to change the other answers to green as well. Instant feedback can be quite motivating for some learners.
• Enter automatic feedback based on your students’ answers: students with a different outcome will get different feedback, adapted to where they are in their learning process.
• Return student results, solely with your personalized feedback, without grades: students receive personalized feedback are able to try again keeping the timely feedback in mind.
• Allow students to edit their answers: students can change their answers to the questions, based upon the automatic or personalized teacher feedback. This effective formative assessment technique may lead to improved learning outcomes.
• Use LIVE activity while students are working on a worksheet or quiz: Know the exact moment when a student begins to struggle or needs support. This is also a great way to see which students are successful and provide enrichment opportunities or challenges to enhance engagement.
• Provide a rationale to a response which is revealed along with the correct response after each question when your students go through the questions one by one: Rationale feedback allows learners to build knowledge sequentially in the learning process.

Digital formative worksheet example

Teachers have so many evaluation options in BookWidgets. This example utilizes the automatic feedback setting. Give it a try yourself to see how it works and what this can mean for your classroom. First, complete this worksheet really badly. Make some mistakes and click on “show score”. Now, read your feedback and edit your answers. Try to do better. What’s your feedback message now?

Digital formative Quiz example

I have another one for you here, with different settings. This is a history quiz where students have to go through the questions one by one. After each question, they also get the right explanation. Go take a look! 👇

4. Educational games

Students are often more motivated when the teacher says the magical words “complete this crossword puzzle”. Games can also be great for assessing prior knowledge or as an opening lesson reflection.

Digital formative crossword puzzle example

This crossword puzzle is also a retrieval practice strategy, where students have to summon their knowledge about the lesson again. They can complete it, see the results and then submit to the teacher. Go ahead and give it a try 👇

The teacher reviews the results and provides written feedback as needed. Finally, the teacher returns the feedback to the student.

Digital formative Pair Matching example

A pair matching game is solely for practicing, but feedback can be added to motivate and encourage students. And that’s what formative assessment is all about. In this example, students need to match the pairs, and after finishing they receive written and audio feedback from the teacher. The feedback could also be a question, asking your students to reflect on the exercise like in the example below. Go take a look!

These Crossword Puzzle and Matching pairs activities were created using BookWidgets.

5. Pop quizzes

Digital pop quiz example

Take a look and go through the quiz. In the end, students have to submit their answers to the teacher and also get the right answers to see how they did.

Since your students have to submit this pop-quiz, you can view the results. Below you can see a snapshot of the reporting data of this BookWidgets quiz. It will show you which questions are hard to solve for the complete class. Use this to get your students back on track for the questions they clearly didn’t understand.

6. Diagnostic tests

You can use a diagnostic assessment to discover diverse learners’ needs. It allows you to see data on struggling learners as well as those who will benefit from increased challenges in learning. It is after the diagnostic assessment that differentiated teaching and learning begins.

Diagnostic test example

Here are two diagnostic test examples for teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL). Both are designed to provide the teacher an understanding of students listening and reading comprehension skills.

Diagnostic test example of listening skills

Diagnostic test example of reading comprehension

Ines Neefs , an English teacher in Belgium, created these BookWidgets diagnostic tests.

7. Journals an portfolios

OR, this can be done differently. Here, a portfolio is used for daily self-reflection allowing opportunities for student to stay on task. Self-reflection allows students time to think about their thinking and learning leading to growth. Students should submit reflections to the teacher who in turn provides suggestions on how to try again, improve and even follow up with individual students.

Digital portfolio example

Portfolios can be websites your students build, or a combination of worksheets, collages, and more. For this example, I picked out a special one. It’s a self-assessment portfolio for students that are learning English. They have to keep track of what they learn, what went good, bad and how they are going to improve their learning outcome.

It’s an example created by Sandy Lapere , an English teacher in Belgium, and her team. She created this portfolio entirely with BookWidgets.

8. Peer assessments

Peer assessments have a few important advantages:

• It encourages your students to reflect on their own learning progress and performance,
• It helps students become autonomous learners,
• It encourages students to be more responsible for their own learning,
• It helps students develop their assessment and argument skills,
• It helps students be more aware of their weaknesses and strengths;
• It helps students learn more from each other.

Using their own and fellow students’ feedback, students can move forward with it and do better. Keep in mind that formative peer assessments aren’t about the grades, but about the feedback.

Peer assessment example

This is a simple but fun peer assessment. After an exercise, a performance or presentation, the fellow students need to give some tops and tips to the student in front of the class.

The teacher picks out 3 students to share their tips and tops out loud. The rest of the class send their results to the student in front of the class via e-mail. After sending it to their fellow students, they can delete their answers from the Widget and use it again for other fellow students.

9. Teacher Observation

In your classroom, you should be able to see struggling students and students that need more challenges. Of course, this is very time-intensive, and you can overlook some things.

This is where technology can be helpful. A lot of apps allow you to track student progress while they are working on an assignment. This allows you to immediately swoop in when needed.

Live Widgets observation example

BookWidgets’ Live Widgets function allows you to do just that: follow students’ progress live while they are working on an assignment. The live widgets dashboard shows you how long it took for students to complete an assignment, how well they did on each question, and if they are stuck or not. You can open individual student work as well and see where things go wrong. This is your cue to help out a student and give instant feedback so they can move on.

Formative assessment tools for teachers

In the arena of educational technology, you’ll see a lot of quiz and testing apps, but keep in mind that the focus must lie on providing your students with timely, meaningful feedback. The playing field for this type of apps narrows a bit, but there are still plenty of good fish in the sea to choose from.

Here is a list of 10 good formative assessment classroom tools for teachers. Of course, you can find many more formative evaluation tools for your classroom here .

1. BookWidgets

BookWidgets has a library with over 40 different exercise templates (or widgets). You can create formative exercises like pair matching games or crossword puzzles, and formative assessments like worksheets and quizzes with over 30 different question types.

The BookWidgets Reporting Dashboard makes sure you get the right student statistics and feedback features to support your students’ learning. And, like I already said before, you can also follow student progress live, while your students are working on an assignment, which allows you to quickly steer students in the right direction.

2. EdPuzzle

Add more value to videos in your lessons. They’re not just an introductory tool anymore. With EdPuzzle you can ask your students lots of questions during the video, so you can test their understanding right away and point out some important parts in the video.

Again, here you get some statistics to see how many times your students saw the video and how well they understood it. As a teacher, you use these statistics and address topics that are still a bit hard to understand for your students.

You can even let parents join in on the conversation. They can see their children’s tasks and comment on them too.

4. Classkick

Teachers provide personalized, real-time feedback and grading with an array of tools–directly on the canvas, in classkicks’ help center, or with pointed stickers. Students can even ask their peers for help anonymously.

5. Flipgrid

Teachers can set up assignments where students need to respond with a video recording. Students can also respond to each other’s videos.

The teacher asks a question, all your students have to answer it on their device and the results show up, on the screen, immediately.

Use this tool for anonymous surveys, brainstorm sessions, questions about the lesson material, Q&A sessions, and much more. Wooclap has a lot of fun live question formats.

7. Formative

The feedback features are really handy (written, audio, video, …) and your students get a notification in case they look over the teachers’ feedback. As a teacher, you can also track student progress in real-time.

All those slides make an amazing interactive presentation. Especially if you add activities like quizzes, open-ended questions, polls, draw questions, and others.

When your presentation is ready, your students can opt-in by entering a code in their Nearpod app or just click on the assigned link in Google Classroom.

You, as a teacher, are in charge of the presentation. when you switch to another slide, the presentation on your students’ devices will also switch to that slide.

When your students’ have to make a quiz or a poll, they can just do that on their screen, as it is a part of the presentation. The answers are gathered live! So you can see immediately what your students answered.

9. Peardeck

You can even add interactive elements such as quiz questions and whiteboards. Every student can answer these in real-time on their own device. This truly engages students, and you’re sure that your students are participating as well.

The one thing I’m most excited about here is the Google Slides Add-on. Add Pear Deck activities to your google slides to make them even more interactive

With Padlet you can create an online post-it board that you can share with any student or teacher you want. Just give them the unique Padlet link. Padlet allows you to insert ideas anonymously or with your name. It’s easy to use and very handy.

Whoever has the Padlet board opened on his device, can see what’s on it and what everyone is writing. Students just have to start adding little sticky notes online. They can see all the ideas gathered on the teacher board immediately. The teacher can allow other comments as well, which makes it the perfect tool for peer assessment.

As there are so many ways to do formative assessment, you might need some handy tips. Whatever formative assessment strategy you use in your classroom, these tips will help you out, and prevent you from making mistakes.

1. Actionable

2. Educational technology

3. Show the difficult parts

4. QR-corner

With BookWidgets, you can even bundle the exercises of the same topic into a WebQuest , creating just 1 QR-code for a complete set of extra exercises. You can also use a planner for this.

5. Video instructions

6. Mastery learning

7. Differentiate instructions

Check out this BookWidgets blog post for 20 ways to give differentiated instructions . These instructions will give students the chance to learn at their own pace or according to their own needs, competencies, and interests. Differentiated instruction strategies make sure students don’t get left behind when the teacher moves forward.

When you’re giving ongoing and regular feedback, you can speak of formative feedback. Formative feedback lies at the base for improvement and is crucial when it comes to formative assessment. Students are in need of ongoing information to identify their strengths and target areas so they know how to improve their learning process.

Make sure to read this comprehensive post about giving meaningful feedback . It will give you many good insights.

Giving meaningful feedback is not always easy. But there are a few feedback rules. Below, I give you a handy overview of the do’s and dont’s of giving feedback. These awesome tips are from Susan M. Brookhart. You can read more about it in her book: “ How to Give Effective Feedback to Your Students .”

It’s a wrap!

I hope you now have all the information about formative assessment you need. Let us know what tips you’ve just learned you’re certainly going to use in your classroom! Start the formative evaluation conversation, mention us on Twitter, @ibookwidgets , and make sure to share this post with fellow teachers.

Hooked on BookWidgets? Join our Teaching with BookWidgets Facebook community 💖. I’m Lucie Renard, and I’d love to connect with you on LinkedIn or Twitter too!

Last but not least, don’t forget to create your first formative evaluation with Bookwidgets here. 👇

Create my first formative evaluation with BookWidgets

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BookWidgets enables teachers to create fun and interactive lessons for tablets, smartphones, and computers.

75 Formative Assessment Examples

Formative assessment is a type of assessment that takes place in the middle of a unit of work. It is usually compared to summative assessment which takes place at the end of the learning experience.

The key characteristic of formative assessment is that learning will take place before and after the assessment. The assessment is designed to help students:

• Stay on track
• Pivot if they are off track
• Deepen their knowledge based on an assessment of what they currently know
• Receive feedback on their progress

Similarly, it helps teachers:

• Change their teaching strategies based on student needs
• Assess students’ current knowledge to inform future instruction
• Reflect on their own teaching practice for continual improvement

Below are some of the best and simplest examples of formative assessment.

Formative Assessment Examples

1. 1-Minute Check In – Check in with every student in the class for one minute throughout the day to see how they are feeling about their tasks. Use the class roll to keep track.

2. 1-Minute Paper – Students get one minute to write a rapid-fire paper on the topic to try to show their depth of knowledge as fast as possible.

3. 3 Things – Students are asked to quickly list 3 things they want to know more about in regards to their topic, or 3 things they don’t currently understand.

4. 3-2-1 Reflection (aka Exit Slip) – Have students write down 3 big ideas from what they learned, 2 insights (reflective comments), and 1 question they still have.

5. 3x Summarization – Have students summarize the topic in three ways: in 10-15 words, 30-50 words, and 75-100 words. As they step up in word count, they will need to add some more depth and detail to demonstrate deeper knowledge.

6. 5 W’s and H – The 5W’s and H method gets students to write down their knowledge of what, when, where, who, why, and how to demonstrate their depth of knowledge about a topic.

7. Anonymous Feedback Box – Have students place anonymous comments about what they’re struggling with into a feedback box. This will allow students to share their concerns with the safety of anonymity. It helps gather crowd-sourced formative assessment but isn’t good for individual formative feedback.

8. Brainstorming – Have the students come together in groups and write down the key question in the middle of a piece of paper. Then, have them brainstorm ways to answer the question around the central question.

9. Check for Transfer – Have the students transfer the current concept from class to a new context. For example, if students are learning a math problem, check if they can apply it in a supermarket context.

10. Cold Calling – Let students know that you will not ask them to put their hands up to answer questions. Instead, you will call on one student randomly and all students by the end of class. This keeps everyone engaged and allows you to do spot checks of knowledge.

11. Comments on Drafts – Have students submit drafts of their essays to provide formative comments at least two weeks before submission.

12. Compare and Contrast – Have students compare two components of what is being learned to help them demonstrate their current knowledge. For example, in a biology class, you could have the students compare reptiles to mammals based on several key criteria.

13. Concept Map – Have students complete a concept map demonstrating their understanding of how concepts connect to one another in visual form.

14. Corner Quiz – Place letters A, B, C, and D on four separate corners of the room. Students are given a multiple choice quiz on what they are learning. Students have to run to the corner that they think has the right answer, e.g. if the answer is D, they run to the corner with the D on it. The teacher can look to see which students are consistently getting the wrong answer (or following others!).

15. Doodle It (Visualization) – Have students draw a representation of what they have learned in a visual format. This is a great formative assessment task for visual learners .

16. Elevator Pitch – Students give a 2-minute ‘elevator pitch’ speech about how much they know about the topic. In two minutes or less, they need to show you the depth of their knowledge.

17. Extension Project – Give students an extension project to see how well they apply the information in a new and less structured context. An example might be getting them to make a diagram about the topic.

18. Five Whys – Have students to ask ‘why’ five times to see if they can get to the root of their knowledge and understanding on a topic. This helps you understand how deeply they know the topic. For example, if the student says “Shakespeare is the best writer in history” ask why, then they say “because his poetry tells the best stories”, then ask why several more times, until they have fleshed out their knowledge to the best of their ability.

19. Flashcards – Have students answer flashcard questions mid-way through the unit of work to check for understanding.

20. Flip Chart Check In – Students get into groups and write anything and everything they know about the topic onto a flip chart. They then present their flip chart to the rest of the class.

21. Formative Presentation – Have the students give a presentation on what they have learned so far. This can be great for a mid-term check-in so you can help students stay on track and go deeper for their end-of-term assessment on the same topic.

22. Hand in, pass out – Students are assessed on a pop quiz. They do not write their own name on the paper. They then hand in their answers and the teacher passes out the answer sheets randomly to the class. The class then grades the anonymous work they are given. The students are given a chance to grade others’ work. The teacher can take the answer in afterward to see the questions that were most commonly incorrect to see what to focus on.

23. Homework Task – Homework is perhaps the most extensively used example of formative assessment. When you grade your students’ homework you can get a good idea of their level of understanding of content explored in class.

24. Hot Seat – A student sits in a seat in front of their peers and gets rapid-fire questions from their peers to test their quick responses. Great for math quizzes.

25. Hot Topics – Students choose one aspect of what they are learning and present in front of the class for 5 minutes about their knowledge, then take 5 minutes of questions.

26. Identify the Misconception – Give students a common misconception about their topic and ask them to explain what the misconception is and how to improve upon it.

27. Intentional Mistake – Intentionally embed an error into the students’ work or instructions and see whether they can identify it part-way through the lesson.

28. KWL Chart – A KWL chart asks students to write down what they know, what they want to know, and what they learned in the lesson. Have students complete this chart at the end of a lesson as a quick formative assessment that can help you structure your follow-up lessons based on student feedback.

29. Lunch Pass – Ask every student a question. If they can get their question right, they can go to lunch.

30. Metacognition – Have the students reflect on what they did, what they learned, why they learned it, how they can apply it, and what they still are unsure about it.

31. More Knowledgeable Other – Have students sit beside a student who is one step ahead of them and learn from the more knowledgeable student. The more knowledgeable student gives them feedback and assesses their progress, giving formative corrections to help them progress. Often, students who are at a similar level to one another are better at explaining concepts than teachers.

32. Open-Ended Questioning – Ask students questions that cannot be answered with a Yes/No answer so you can gather their depth of knowledge in the answer.

33. Paraphrasing – Give students a piece of information then ask them to repeat the information back to you in their own words to see if they understand it.

34. Peer Assessment – Have students grade each other’s work. This allows students to see other students’ work to gather whether they’re on track and how to improve.

35. Photo Assessment – Have students take photos of things they think best represent their current level of knowledge. Students might take photos of their current projects. Then, have them write descriptions underneath that explain what they currently know about the topic.

36. Pop Quiz – Give the students a quiz at the beginning, middle, or end of a lesson that involves just 5 to 10 questions that can allow you to see how much they know.

37. Postcard – The students write a postcard or letter from one historical figure to another describing something. For example, psychology students might write a letter from Bronfenbrenner to his wife explaining his Ecological Systems Theory .

38. Prediction and Hypothesis – Halfway through the lesson, have students make a prediction or hypothesis about what will happen by the end of the lesson. This will help the teacher know if the students are starting to understand what is being taught.

39. Prior Knowledge Onboarding Task – Have students write down what they already know about a topic before the first lesson. This will help you know what level you need to start your teaching at and help prevent redundancy in re-teaching things students already know.

40. RSQC2 – RSQC2 stands for Recall, Summarize, Question, Connect, Comment. Students start with recall which involves listing words or phrases that they recall from class. They then summarize the words by putting them all into a sentence that explains the topic. For Question, they list any questions they have that are unanswered. For connect, students write about connections between the lesson and the overall goals of the unit of work. For Comment, students provide a feedback comment to the teacher evaluating their teaching. 

41. Run an Opinion Poll – Poll the students on their opinion of the topic and examine the responses. The teacher can gauge students’ knowledge based on their answers in the poll.

42. Running Records – Have students take notes throughout the class on questions they have and things they don’t understand. As you come around to check on the student, ask them to show their running records notecard.

43. Spaced Repetition Testing – Students are given pop quizzes at strategically placed intervals to help students remember information they may be forgetting. For example, you might give students a quiz after 1 day, then 3, then 8, then 15. The answers from the quiz can help you assess student retention of knowledge learned in class.

44. Sticky Notes – Have students leave a sticky note on their desk with a comment about what they would like to know more about.

45. Student Becomes Teacher – Have the student teach the concept they are learning to a small group of peers.

46. Students Create a Test – Have each student create a 20-question test that they would use to test someone on the topic. Students write the answers to the test on a separate paper. Then, have the students swap mock-up tests with each other and fill out the answers.

47. Submit a Research Proposal – Have students submit a mock (or real!) research proposal stating what they would want to research further into the topic they have been discussing ( use my research proposal examples ). Get them to discuss what they would research, why they are curious about that aspect, and how they would go about it. This can reveal a great deal of new information about the student’s current level of knowledge.

48. Submit an Essay Plan – For students writing an essay, get them to submit their essay plan for approval. Using this method, you can catch if a student is off track and correct the course so they submit a high-quality essay.

49. TAG Feedback – Have students assess one another by getting them to tell a peer what they did well, ask them a question about their knowledge, then give feedback to their peer.

50. Text Rendering – Students take one quote that they think is the most important or illuminating from an article and explain why they think it’s the best quote.

51. Think-Pair-Share – Students spend one minute individually writing down key points from what they learned. They then pair up with a partner and compare notes. Finally, the pair share what they learned with the class. The class can ask questions and the teacher can assess the pair’s knowledge from their presentation and responses.

52. Timeline (Historical) – Students create a historical timeline demonstrating their knowledge of the sequence of events from a historical process or series of events.

53. Timeline (Lesson Reflection) – A lesson reflection timeline gets students to reflect on their lesson by writing down 

54. Ungraded Essay – Have students submit an essay or essay draft that is not graded. Students submit the essay only for feedback, which will inform their final submission.

55. Venn Diagram – Students use a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast two elements of what they are learning. The outer sides of the Venn diagram show unique features of each element. The overlap shows the similarities.

Instant Formative Assessment for Teachers

56. Fingers Up – Have students show their level of knowledge by showing a certain number of fingers. One finger means uncertainty and discomfort while five fingers means strong confidence with the content.

57. Hand Thermometer – Students put their hand up only a distance they think they are comfortable with the knowledge. A low hand up shows mild comfort, a medium shows moderate understanding, and a stretched hand shows high confidence in the content.

58. Quick Nod – Ask students to nod if they understand. This can be great as a very fast way to check for comprehension in the middle of a task.

59. Red / Green Cards – Provide students with red and green cards. They can hold up the green card if they are ready to move on to the next part of the lesson or the red card if they’re still confused.

60. Thumbs Up, Middle, Thumbs Down – Have students quickly respond with their thumbs to show levels of understanding or enthusiasm.

61. Traffic Lights – An extension of red/green cards, the traffic lights system also have an amber color for students who are feeling tentative about their progress. For this one, you can pair students who held up green lights with those who held up amber lights to teach each other while the teacher works with students who held up red lights.

62. Two Roses and a Thorn – Have students present two things they are happy or knowledgeable about, and one thing they are still finding “prickly”.

63. Watch Body Language – Students who misunderstand may be crossing their legs, looking away, or frowning.

Self-Evaluative Formative Assessment

64. Self-Evaluation on Marking Rubric – Provide students the criteria you will be using to grade their work (also known as a marking rubric) and get them to self-assess what grade they think they will get.

65. Self-Sort – Have students choose which level they are at in a task: beginner, intermediate, or advanced, and have them select the next piece of work based on their self-evaluated level.

66. SMART Goals Self-Evaluation – Have the students complete a personal SMART Goal template demonstrating what their goals are and whether they think they are on track for achieving it.

67. SWOT Analysis – Have students complete a SWOT analysis that demonstrates what their strengths are in relation to what they are learning, what their weaknesses are, opportunities for improvement for the rest of the unit of work, and threats that they could avoid. This will make sure they stay on track.

Technology Enhanced Formative Assessment

68. Blog About It – Have students write weekly 200-word blog posts about what they learned and comment on each student’s blog comment assessing what they did well and what they need to focus on in the next week.

69. Clickers – Use clickers (instant Yes/No responses – technology required) to provide instant feedback to the teacher on their level of understanding.

70. Forum Comments – Have students submit one forum comment per week to their online discussion board for the teacher to provide a formative assessment and comment on what they did well and how to improve.

71. Padlet – Have students use the Padlet app to contribute their ideas to a virtual notice board to show their thoughts and knowledge to the group.

72. Text the Answer – Have students text an answer to you in 50 words or less once they have completed the task.

73. Twitter Comment – Have students tweet what they learned in class today and tweet a reply to a friend’s comment.

74. Write 1 if you Understand, 2 if you Don’t – This is a task for online lessons. Have students simply write a 1 or 2 in the chatbox. This can also get quiet groups to start contributing in a small no-risk step.

75. YouTube Communities Poll – Have students complete a YouTube poll using the YouTube communities tab.

Related Articles:

• Constructive Feedback Examples
• Achievement test examples

Formative assessment are usually informal evaluations that give students an opportunity to pivot and improve based on the teacher’s feedback. A the same time, it’s valuable for the teacher who needs to assess students’ current knowledge and pain points in order to adjust their teaching practices and maximize students’ chances of passing the summative assessment that will occur at the end of the unit of work.

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 5 Top Tips for Succeeding at University
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 50 Durable Goods Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 100 Consumer Goods Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 30 Globalization Pros and Cons

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• Formative Assessment: Meaning, Types & Examples

Formative assessment allows you to evaluate students’ performance in real-time, and also improve the course content and delivery during the learning process. It makes it easier for teachers to track the performance of students during a course or training program.

Since formative assessment happens on the go, it is best described as a quick-fire method of monitoring the learner’s progress. To do this, the researcher needs to ask different questions and administer multiple class exercises to get valuable feedback from the students. 

What is Formative Assessment?

Formative assessment is a process of evaluating the students’ knowledge as they learn. It is a method of on-going assessment and it involves putting together a series of quick-fire questions and exercises to help you monitor the learner’s progress during the course. 

As students learn, they will experience challenges along the way—they may find it difficult to understand a concept or to grasp a few examples. Without formative assessments, it is almost impossible for the teacher to recognize when the student is struggling and to provide the right support. 

Unlike summative assessment that happens at the end of a course, formative assessment tracks the student’s knowledge level on the go. Since it doesn’t measure the student’s knowledge against some standard, it is typically considered as having a low or no point value. 

Characteristics of Formative Assessment  

Understanding the characteristics of formative assessment enables you to plan and execute one effectively as an instructor. For instance, knowing that formative assessment and learning happen concurrently will help you avoid waiting till the end of a course before evaluating your students. 

Other things you should know about formative assessment include:

• It evaluates the learning process and the learner’s progress at the same time.
• A formative assessment is collaborative as it measures the student’s progress and the effectiveness of the teaching method.
• Formative assessments are interwoven with the ongoing teaching and learning process.
• It is a fluid method of evaluation. The student’s progress is not measured against a standard or benchmark unlike what you will find with summative assessment methods.
• Formative assessment requires the instructors and the students to become intentional learners.
• The aim of formative assessment is to gather actionable feedback that improves the overall teaching and learning process.
• It is a diagnostic method of evaluation.
• Results from formative assessments are immediately made available.
• Formative assessments are non-graded.

Examples of Formative Assessment 

• Impromptu Quiz

After a lesson, you can ask students to take part in an impromptu quiz to know how well they understood the course material. An easy way to do this is by creating a short online quiz with relevant close-ended questions using Formplus.

A poll is a way to gather instant feedback from students as they learn by asking the right questions. Formplus allows you to create simple and fun polls that help you to evaluate your students’ knowledge as part of formative assessment.

With multiple form field options, you can have different types of rating questions in your poll including heart and emoji ratings. Formplus also has an automatic poll closing option; making it easier for you to integrate the online polls into the overall teaching and learning process. 

• One Minute Papers

Another way to assess students’ knowledge on the go is by asking them to create simple one-minute papers; they can do this online with Formplus. You can create a simple 1-minute survey with open-ended questions and ask your students to share their knowledge within a particular context.

• Entry Slips

Before starting off on a new topic or lesson, you can ask one or more questions to know how much the students remember from the previous lesson. You can edit any of our online surveys and list differentiated questions for the students to respond to.

Exit slips are used to measure the students’ progress at the end of the lesson. Ask learners to write some of the points they remember from the lesson on scrap paper or create a simple online questionnaire on Formplus to collect relevant responses from students.

If you hosted the class on e-learning platforms like Google Classroom and Edulastic, you can track what your students know at a glance and also measure their progress, in line with the teaching and learning goals. 

Think of these as easy and quick methods to know how well the learners understand different concepts discussed in class. You can ask learners to write short letters explaining core concepts to another person or do a think-pair-share exercise with a partner.

• Visual Exercises

Ask students to interpret core ideas from the course using simple visual representations. They can create basic sketches of what they have learned or you can create a simple survey and ask them to choose the most appropriate visual representation from the image options in your Formplus form.

• Interviews and Focus Groups

At specific intervals during the class, you can organize quick interviews and focus groups to assess the students. These can be in the form of casual discussions with the learners or 10-minutes structured interviews using an online survey or questionnaire. Organizing and focus groups can provide better contexts for the assessment.

• Tag Feedback

This is a peer assessment method where the students evaluate and provide feedback on each other’s performance. As students assess their peers, you gain valuable insights into how well they understand the course material and topic(s).

Tag feedback is an effective way to get the students involved in formative assessment. Ask learners to highlight the positive contributions of their peers, or to suggest ways to improve the course content, teaching method, or overall classroom engagement. 

• Self-assessment

One of the best ways to conduct formative assessments is to simply ask the students to do it themselves while you provide the needed guidance. When students evaluate themselves, they can reflect on their learning goals and discover their strengths and weaknesses.

How to Use Formplus to Conduct Formative Assessment  

As a seamless data collection tool, Formplus allows you to create effective forms, questionnaires , and surveys for formative assessment. It has multiple form features and templates; making it easy for you to assess students’ knowledge as you engage with them in the classroom. 

Create your questionnaire for formative assessment with these easy steps: 

• Log into your Formplus dashboard and click the “create new form” button at the top of the dashboard. If you do not have a Formplus account, visit www.formpl.us and follow the prompt to create one.

• In the form builder, add the title of your online questionnaire to the title box.

• Drag and drop preferred form fields from the form fields section into your questionnaire. You can choose from more than 30 form field options located on the left side of the builder.

• Click on the pencil icon beside each field to include your question(s) and option(s), if any. You can also make the field required or read-only.

• Click on the “save icon” for all the changes you’ve made to your assessment questionnaire. When you do this, you will automatically access the form customization section.
• Use multiple form customization options to change the look and feel of your questionnaire. You can change the background color to your brand hue and add your organization’s logo to the questionnaire.

• Click on the form sharing option and choose any of the options to share your questionnaire with learners for formative assessment. Formplus allows you to send out email invitations, share the form directly on social media, and also add it to your website.

• Monitor responses in our form analytics dashboard.

Now, let’s talk about some of the features that make Formplus a great formative assessment tool. 

1. Mobile-friendly Forms

Smartphones have become indispensable learning tools and this is why your formative assessment needs to go mobile too. With our mobile-friendly forms, you can conduct formative assessments and track students’ progress using mobile phone surveys and forms.

Formplus allows you to create custom mobile forms that can be viewed and filled out on any internet-enabled device on-the-go. Our mobile-responsive forms adapt to any smart device they are viewed on; making it possible for students to complete polls and questionnaires without pinching or zooming out on their screens. 

2. Multiple Form Fields

Choose from our multiple form fields to help you collect feedback from students in different formats. Formplus has more than 30 form fields that support data collection the way you like. Some of the form fields you can use for formative assessment are text fields, rating fields, and image choice options. 

3. Multiple Form Sharing Options

Formplus has multiple form-sharing options; making it more convenient for students to participate in formative assessment. After creating your online assessment survey, poll, or questionnaire, you can send out email invitations to students to fill the form—this is a great idea for entry and exit slips.

4. Autofill Form Data from Spreadsheet

Formplus allows you to autofill students’ data from a spreadsheet so that respondents do not have to bother about providing information from scratch as they participate in formative assessment. After mapping out the students’ data on your form or survey, send out email invitations to students to allow them to update their information via custom prefilled forms. 

5. File Uploads

Formplus offers flexible and unlimited file uploads so you can collect different file types of any file size directly in your form, and save them in your preferred cloud storage. You can add numerous file upload fields directly in the Formplus form builder; choosing from 30 available form fields. 

Advantages of Formative Assessment  

• Formative assessment helps students to align their learning goals with the aims and objectives of the coursework or training. It keeps the learning goals in the minds of everyone and instructors can help students to resolve any challenges they face before they get off track.
• Formative assessment improves the overall learner performance. As teachers monitor learners’ progress, they can utilize the feedback to improve the learning experience and ultimately, the learner’s performance.
• It is an effective way to boost your students’ motivation. Formative assessment spurs learners to smash their goals by consistently tracking their progress towards specific knowledge objectives.
• By tracking learners’ progress using different formative assessment methods, the teacher can create personalized learning experiences for the students. Formative assessment helps you to understand the unique needs of your students and know the best ways to support them on their individual learning journeys.
• Formative assessment empowers the instructors to make data-driven decisions. Using the data gathered from frequent learning checks, the instructor can make valid and informed decisions that are grounded in real-time experiences.
• It helps instructors to adjust their teaching methods to better suit the needs of the learners.

Disadvantages of Formative Assessment  

• Formative assessment can be time-consuming because the teacher needs to implement several methods to effectively monitor students’ progress as they learn.
• The more formative assessments you incorporate in the learning process, the lesser time there is for actual teaching.
• Planning formative assessment processes can be tedious and exhausting for the instructor.
• The instructor’s bias or any other form of subjectivity affects the validity of the whole process and can create an inaccurate representation of the students’ progress.
• Since formative assessments are non-graded, students may not be eager or motivated to participate in them; especially when they are accustomed to getting grades or points for their academic progress.

Formative assessment has a huge positive impact on the teaching and learning process. Teachers can use the data from formative assessment to improve their teaching methods while students use the platform to draw the teacher’s attention to areas where they need help. 

It is also a great way to boost class participation because the students get involved in different quick-fire tasks as the course progresses. If you are just getting familiar with this method of course evaluation, you can start by creating an online impromptu quiz for your students using Formplus or putting a 1-minute online survey together. 

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Top 21 Formative Assessment Examples for Teachers That Are Fun and Fast

Written by Marcus Guido

Reviewed by Meredith Melvin, B.Ed.

Free assessment tool

Use Prodigy's assessment features to quiz students on over 1,000 math skills as they play Prodigy! Complete with automatic grading and insights.

• Teaching Strategies

1. Prodigy Math and Prodigy English

2. four corners, 3. three summaries, 4. hand it in, pass it out, 5. self-evaluation, 6. partner quiz, 7. highlighter, 8. transfer the concept, 9. think-pair-share, 11. stop and go, 12. virtual classroom, 13. illustrations, 14. letters through time, 15. entry and exit tickets, 16. two roses and a thorn, 17. countdown, 18. one-minute papers, 19. metacognition sheet, 20. roll the die, 21. clickers in the classroom.

Educators want to improve their instruction to elevate student learning and understanding.

But it can be challenging to teach a lesson or unit that ensures you're reaching a variety of comprehension levels.

This is when formative assessments come into play.

You can use these evaluations to gather information about student needs, progress and comprehension, informing how you teach a skill or topic while doing so.

But to be effective and efficient, formative assessments should align with the content you’re covering and your students’ learning styles .

For example, if your students don’t hesitate to ask questions and share opinions, an assessment rooted in open discussion may be appropriate. It might not work for a reserved group.

Find formative assessment ideas that are best for your students and teaching style

These examples of formative assessments can easily be integrated into your lesson plans. They can also be set up at the end of class without much prep needed as traditional testing. Plus, get a downloadable PDF to keep at your desk for quick reference at the end of the list!

Keep making the most of one-to-one device use by using Prodigy to gauge students’ math or English skills . Covering over 1,500 math skills from 1st grade to 8th grade level, Prodigy makes assessments fun and effortless to deliver.

When they start the curriculum-aligned online game, they dive into a diagnostic test that identifies their strengths and skill deficits to pinpoint their levels of understanding. You can then deliver individualized in-game assignments, which generate progress and performance reports.

With these formative assessment features, it’s worthwhile to try Prodigy's free teacher tools. See how to use Prodigy for formative assessments!

Level up your assessments with Prodigy

Prodigy's engaging assessments can help you effectively address the diverse comprehension levels in your classroom. With features like Placement Tests, Assignments, and Standardized Test Preparation, Prodigy makes it easy to tailor assessments to individual student needs. Simply set the content or students you want to evaluate, have them play Prodigy and once they're done, you'll get automatically graded data and insights in your dashboard.

And the best bit? It's fun for students!

Encourage physical activity while gauging general student comprehension through this aptly-named exercise. To plan, put a list of multiple choice questions together. Each should have four answers.

Gather students in the middle of the room, reading each question and its possible answers aloud. Students then move to the corner that represents what they believe is the correct answer. For example, the top-left room corner can be option A , the bottom-left can be B and so on.

Depending on how students move, you should gain an understanding of class comprehension.

While this can be a fun activity, be mindful of students following or choosing the same corner as their friends. Consider following up with another formative assessment type to best gauge their comprehension.

Challenge students to think critically by giving them this processing and review activity.

To check their understanding of a new idea, concept or content piece, ask them to write three summaries. The first should be 10 to 15 words. The second is 30 to 50 words. The third is 75 to 100 words.

By asking students to vary the lengths of their summaries, they’ll have to remember different details as they refine their understandings .

After, collect the summaries to see where knowledge gaps are.

Run this short exercise to  build topic comprehension.

It starts by posing a question with an objective answer that’s explainable in a few sentences. Without writing their names down, students should answer the question on plain sheets of paper.

As they hand the papers in to you, quickly distribute them back to students at random. Explain what the correct answer is, so that they can grade the paper they’ve received. In doing so, they’ll improve their understanding of the topic.

Conclude the exercise by taking a poll to measure how many papers had the right response.

Allow students to evaluate their own work, encouraging them to learn their own strengths and weaknesses.

Giving students time to formally review their own written assessments is an easy way of doing so. After completing the assessment, give each student access to an expanded rubric that details expectations. They should grade themselves accordingly.

You can also ask them to hand in their completed rubrics, letting you note concerns that students may have about their own knowledge and comprehension.

Develop  peer teaching  skills in your class  by running partner quizzes, which also allow students to assess themselves.

To launch a partner quiz, pair students together and provide an open question to tackle. As they work to solve it, encourage them to give each other corrective feedback — identifying mistakes and explaining how to reach proper solutions.

Once the pair has answered the question, each student can independently work on a question related to the same concept.

You can collect responses to wrap up the exercise.

Assess student understanding of a text-based resource through this solo and small-group exercise.

Each student should read the same written passage or resource, highlighting sentences that stick out as important or interesting. Once everyone is done, divide the class into groups of three or four.

Within their group, each student must share the sentences he or she highlighted. Each group should be able to pinpoint the text’s main idea or theme in doing so, submitting an explanation so you can determine general comprehension levels.

Help students grasp a new concept  by having them apply it to a different area.

Let’s say you’ve recently taught how to identify protagonists and antagonists in novels. After determining students have a strong command of the concept, watch a clip from a show, movie or perhaps shorter media such as advertisements.

Individually, have them write down who the protagonists and antagonists are to ensure their  understanding isn’t confined to one medium .

Oversee a think-pair-share exercise to deliver three content-processing activities in one , easily assessing student understanding during the last stage.

As the name of this  differentiated instruction  strategy implies, start by asking each student to  think  about a specific topic or answer a given question. Next,  pair  students together to discuss their findings.

Finally, each pair should  share  their thoughts with the class and accept questions from classmates.

Launch a jigsaw activity to  teach accountability to each student  while checking for understanding of a specific topic.

A mainstay part of  cooperative learning , the method consists of dividing a task into subtasks and assigning one to each student in a small group. Group members then work to become “experts” about the information within their subtasks.

For example, if the group is investigating multiplication, one group member may be in charge of learning more about the multiplication of negative integers. Each student returns to their group after this investigation process, sharing new knowledge.

For assessment purposes, you can require each group to write a short report about the overarching topic you assigned.

Allow students to give you real-time feedback as you teach with “stop and go” cards.

Purchasable or assignable as an art task, they’re two-sided cards — one green and one red. As you deliver a lesson, students should hold the green side toward you if they understand everything.

If something’s unclear, encourage them to turn the red side forward. When you see red, stop and clarify — or expand upon — your points until you see green again.

This should help you quickly assess if students are processing content as you deliver it.

If you’re teaching virtually or have access to one-to-one devices in your classroom, these formative assessment tools can help you ask students questions interactively, while teaching!

Capitalize on one-to-one device use, if possible, by  automatically sending questions to students as you’re teaching.

With online platforms or apps such as  Socrative , Google Forms and Kahoot! , you can write questions that correspond with your lessons, pre-scheduling them or sending them to students on-the-spot.

Because they quickly and privately respond using devices, you shouldn’t have trouble eliciting answers from those who don’t typically raise their hands.

And since you can send questions at any time using these platforms, they work for quizzes, activities, entry and exit slips and many other forms of formative assessments.

Assess young students’ reading comprehension, or listening, skills  by delivering this  interdisciplinary  formative assessment.  

The activity,  Illustrations , starts by either reading a story passage out loud or having students read it individually. Irrespective of who reads, each student must draw the content depicted in the passage.

If the passage already has an accompanying illustration, you can show it to students afterward. This way, they can see how close they were.

Organize this creative writing assignment to gauge comprehension in history class.

Students assume the role of a specific historical figure, relevant to course content, and pair with a classmate from the same setting.

Each student in the duo must write a series of letters to one another. These letters should discuss an event or isolated time period that’s historically significant.

As well as acting as a formative assessment, the exercise can effectively prepare students for essays, reports, long-answer tests and other summative assessments.

Gather information about how well students processed your most recent lesson  by giving them five minutes to write an entry or exit ticket.

As a formative assessment, entry tickets should ask students to reflect on a specific class or exercise from the previous day. Exit tickets should involve students summarizing what they’ve just learned.

Either way, you’ll receive small products that let you easily see how well students processed and retained key content, indicating knowledge gaps.

You can even use Prodigy assignments as entry or exit tickets , by assigning students specific skills and receiving real-time data to determine student understanding.

Determine content for your next class by concluding a lesson, presentation or chapter reading with two Roses and a Thorn -- a quick-to-deliver type of exit ticket and reflection exercise.

Each student must note two topics or concepts he or she enjoyed learning about, and another they didn’t like or still have questions about. They must hand in their responses before leaving class.

If students share the same difficulties or dislikes, it may indicate a need to re-explore a topic or shift your approach to teaching it.

Deliver this activity if  Two Roses and a Thorn  doesn’t provide enough insight, or  you feel your students need a deeper exercise.

Best used to end the day,  Countdown  requires students to create three distinct lists.

They must state and explain (a) three ideas or concepts they learned, (b) two ideas or concepts that surprised them and (c) one thing they intend to start doing based on what they learned.

Collective responses should indicate if students generally grasped a day’s material.

Inject variety into your end-of-day reflection exercises by asking students to complete one-minute papers.

A solo writing task, you don’t have to take one-minute papers literally. Students can have a bit more time as they work to answer a brief question about the lesson.

It should be an open question, which allows you to easily assess understanding.

For example, you can ask students about (a) the lesson’s confusing areas, (b) any unaddressed queries they have or (c) what question from the lesson they think may appear on an upcoming test.

Pinpoint trouble spots and knowledge gaps before a summative assessment by having students answer specific questions about the given topic.

This starts by distributing sheets of paper with the following questions: (a) “Can you summarize the topic?”, (b) “How can you apply the topic?” and (c) “What questions do you still have about the topic?”

Encouraging detailed answers should help you identify which students are struggling, and what their specific struggles are.

Put a spin on reflection-based assessments by asking students to vocalize instead of write them, quickly taking notes as they speak.

To end class, start the activity by placing a die at each student’s desk. Each die face represents the beginning of a sentence that must be completed.

Displaying or projecting them at the front of class, these sentences should be along the lines of: “I learned today that …” or “I’m still confused about …”

Since there are six options and likely many more students in your class, you’ll hear a range of answers as students roll dice one after another, completing the corresponding sentences aloud.

As a result, you should get a grasp of what students do and don’t understand about the day’s lessons.

Clickers, also known as student response systems, are small, handheld devices that let students answer to questions in real-time. This is an interactive formative assessment strategy that can provide instant feedback on student comprehension and help you adjust your teaching accordingly.

To begin, prepare a set of multiple-choice or true/false questions on the content you're teaching. As you present each question, give the students a short period of time to use their clickers to submit their answers. The response system then collates the responses and displays the results, giving you a clear view of the overall understanding of the class.

Using clickers in the classroom can be especially useful at engaging students who may be hesitant or nervous to participate in open discussions or answer questions aloud. It also offers a quick and efficient way to understand individual student and class comprehension, ensuring you're meeting the needs of all learners.

Wrapping up

These formative assessment activities differ, but all deliver the same underlying benefits.

Students should grow cognizant of their learning needs, styles, strengths and areas of improvement. You should improve your general understanding of student learning, and identify problem areas to address before  summative assessments .

As a likely result, they’ll be better equipped to self-assess and you’ll deliver more engaging, targeted lessons.

Or create your teacher account on Prodigy — an engaging game-based learning platform that assesses student progress and performance as they play.

Eberly Center

Teaching excellence & educational innovation, what is the difference between formative and summative assessment, formative assessment.

The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning. More specifically, formative assessments:

• help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work
• help faculty recognize where students are struggling and address problems immediately

Formative assessments are generally low stakes , which means that they have low or no point value. Examples of formative assessments include asking students to:

• draw a concept map in class to represent their understanding of a topic
• submit one or two sentences identifying the main point of a lecture
• turn in a research proposal for early feedback

Summative assessment

The goal of summative assessment is to evaluate student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark.

Summative assessments are often high stakes , which means that they have a high point value. Examples of summative assessments include:

• a midterm exam
• a final project
• a senior recital

Information from summative assessments can be used formatively when students or faculty use it to guide their efforts and activities in subsequent courses.

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