You want to do a quick check for understanding or a reading check or skill check, but you don’t want it to take the whole class or even half the class. That’s why you need these five formative assessment strategies.
What are Formative Assessments?
I generally think of a formative assessment as a quick check for understanding. They are used in the middle of a unit and take less than a period. Formative assessments check one or two skills or a short list of specific bites of knowledge. They are unlike an essay or a project which would be a summative assessment and usually comes near the end of a unit.
This means that ideally, they should be quick assessments that are quick to grade. You want to be able to use the data you glean from a formative assessment to direct what comes next.
As part of my bell ringer routine, my AP® Literature students write thesis statements every Friday. (You can read more about that in Helping Your Students Master the AP® Lit Thesis.) I use this to check that students understood the Poem of the Week or the Passage of the Week. But, I also want to check how they are writing their thesis statements. Generally, some time in early October, I teach a lesson on thesis writing based on what I see over the course of the first few weeks.
Five Formative Assessment Strategies
Looking for some ideas that will help you with your formative assessment strategy? I’ve got you. Here are five that I use regularly.
Formative Assessment Strategy 1: Use Bell Ringers and Exit Tickets
Using warm ups (bell ringers, bell work, “do nows”–whatever you call them) or exit tickets are perfect as one of your formative assessment strategies. They can be quick (10 minutes or less) which then also makes them quick to grade.
To use a formative assessment as a warm up, have it ready when students walk in the door. When the bell rings, set a timer (7-12 minutes is usually the right amount of time). And when the timer goes off, move on.
On the other end, you can do your formative assessment at the end of class as an exit ticket. You can use your digital platform or paper for this type of assessment. And, you can check the answers as they are being turned in. This is great if you want to check the learning for that period as a way to inform your instruction for the next day.
Get 10 Free Bell Ringers that can be used for formative assessments.
Formative Assessment Strategy 2: Make Them Short
For any assessment to work in your formative assessment strategies, you need them to be short enough to grade and turn around very, very quickly. This is actually why I love using them as bell ringers.
Whatever you assign as your formative assessment, ideally you should be able to grade an entire set (like all of your sections, so 50-100 responses) in one planning period or less. Anything more than that is probably not really a formative assessment.
Formative Assessment Strategy 3: Use a Timer
There is always the potential that a formative can bog down your class and take much longer than it should. One of the formative assessment strategies that I use to combat this is the timer. This works especially well if the formative assessments are part of your weekly routine like mine are with my bell ringers.
Additionally, I want to create a sense of urgency. Students need to understand that this is a quick assessment. And since I mostly teach AP®, I also want students to get used to working under time pressure like they will on the exam.
Formative Assessment Strategy 4: Use Technology
For formative assessments I intend to grade, I generally use a “Question” in Google Classroom and then I can monitor and assess answers as they come in. Sometimes I have most of them graded before we even move on to the next activity.
If you are not familiar with a “Question” in Google Classroom it is used for multiple choice or short answer and the students are given a box to type in. In the teacher’s view, all the answers show up on the same page which makes it super quick to go down the line and score them.
Formative Assessment Strategy 5: Don’t grade them all
If you choose to do formative activities as bell ringers, it is not necessary to grade them all. Students can have practice without a grade being attached to every task. And it’s okay to leave some of them ungraded. You really only need to grade the ones that provide you with feedback you need right now (like how to move on or multiple assessments of a skill).
Developing Formative Assessments Strategies for High School English
However you decide to structure your formative assessments, always remember your purpose. Formative assessments are meant to inform future instructions, so make sure to establish formative assessment strategies that help you to do just that. For more on developing your bell ringer routine, be sure to check out Classroom Routines: Decide Once on Bell Ringers.
Additional Resources
Free: 10 Bell Ringers to Use for Formative Assessments
Helping Your Students Master the AP® Lit Thesis
Classroom Routines: Decide Once on Bell Ringers
One Response