7 Formative Assessments in 10 Minutes or Less

The goals for formative assessments are that they are 1. quick and 2. easy to grade which is why today I am sharing 7 formative assessments that you can do in your high school classroom in ten minutes or less.

Using Bell Ringers and Exit Tickets for Formative Assessments

Both bell ringers (warm ups, bell work, “do nows”) and exit tickets are a great way to collect data through quick formative assessments. I use bell ringers at least once a week to do quick assessments. In fact, they form the basis for my Formative Assessment Strategies.

7 Formative Assessments that your students can complete in 10 minutes or less. For high school English,

7 Bell Ringer and/or Exit Tickets for Formative Assessments

*** This post contains affiliate links to Bookshop.org. If you click through and make a purchase, I might receive the tiniest of commissions. Bookshop.org is an organization dedicated to helping small independent bookstores. When you make a purchase through Bookshop, you can also select a bookstore that will earn the full profit from the title. ***

1. Poem of the Week, Passage of the Week or Rhetorical Analysis of the Week

Each of these warm ups serve a different purpose, but each of them end the week with an assessment. These three bell ringers all follow the same general pattern. The first four days of the week, students read and reread a short text to observe a different idea. (To read more about Poem of the Week, check out this post.) And then, on Fridays, students write a thesis for a prompt based on what they will see in summative assessments.

2. A Quote of the Week or the Day

Giving students a quote of the week or a quote of the day can be a great way to practice paraphrasing and/or diction analysis. At the beginning of the year, I love to teach my AP® Language and English 11 students the difference between quoting, paraphrasing and summary. Using quotes related to the essential question or from the larger text are a great opportunity to do a formative assessment.

3. A One Word Prompt

Asking students for “one word to describe X” is perfect for assessing what students know about a character, a setting, a conflict and more. Recently in my Macbeth Unit, I asked students for One Word to describe either Lady Macbeth or Macbeth. Students must carefully consider their diction as well as their reasoning.

4. Have Students Spill the TEA

Ask students to write a quick paragraph that includes just 3-5 sentences. They can spill the TEA: topic sentence, evidence and analysis. And it can be on any topic. Once they understand, you could simply say, “Spill the TEA on Macbeth in Act 1.”

5. Three of These Things

This is one borrowed from Amanda Cardenas of Mud and Ink Teaching. She calls it a “Sesame Street quiz.” Give students a list of four items and ask them to explain why three of them fit together and the fourth is an outlier. Ideally, any combination should work, so then students need to work on their argumentation skills in addition to showing an understanding of the text.

6. Lessons in Close Reading

Lessons in Close Reading are based on Nancy Dean’s Voice Lessons. These are very short passages which ask students to focus on one aspect of the author’s craft in a written response. I often use these when we are doing a longer text like Macbeth or Hamlet.

7. 3 2 1 Strategy

The 3 2 1 Strategy asks students to list 3 of X, 2 of Y and 1 of Z. These are a great way to check for understanding on certain aspects of a text while also allowing them to pose a question if needed. I often ask students to pose one question while the other two requests are more text specific. These work equally well as exit tickets and bell ringers.

Formative Assessments in Under 10 minutes

These seven styles of formative assessments can be done in very little time making them true formative assessments. And you can repeat them over and over to check for skills multiple times which makes them ideal for standards based grading. Be sure to grab this Bell Ringer Sampler for free. It includes many of the ideas listed above.