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Checking for Student Understanding: Formative Assessment Techniques For Your Classroom

Updated: Jan 17, 2023

By: Kara Wasnewsky

What are formative assessments?

Formative assessments are assessments used to inform instruction, rather than to assess student achievement. Formative assessments should occur during a lesson. Think of them as check-ins that happen as you teach your students where you can get a sense of where they are as a class or as individuals, so you can adapt your instruction to their needs.

Benefits of using formative assessments

Formative assessment benefits instructors by providing data that can be used to guide your instructional decisions. Have you ever looked out at your students and thought “I wonder if they understand what I just said”, or questioned whether they may need another example or to be explained something in a different way. Formative assessment techniques can be used to find answers to questions like these. Once you understand where your students are with their learning you can decide how to adapt your instruction. You may just need to explain something again, or maybe for some students you need something more, like help from a tutor or other individual strategy.

For students formative assessment provides a way for them to track their own learning progress. If they struggle with the formative assessments they complete in class, then they hopefully will realize that they need to seek help before the test or the project is due. What they are weak and strong in shouldn’t be a mystery until it is time to study for the test. Formative assessment allows them to catch that earlier. This back and forth from instructor to students will increase engagement and motivation for students and it will allow them to more easily connect what they are learning in a lesson to the assessment that will come.

The formative assessment cycle

When thinking about formative assessment keep this cycle in mind. Always start by identifying the objectives/goals for the lesson. Your formative assessments (as well as your summative assessments) should always be aligned to the lesson’s objectives). Then provide the instruction and gather data through formative assessment techniques. Take a look at what that data is telling you and come up with a plan to adapt the instruction based on it.

Formative assessment techniques

In the classroom

Ask Students Questions In Class: Call on students to answer questions about the lesson as you are teaching it to check to make sure students are understanding the material.

Some tips for effective questioning:

  1. Questions should be aligned to the lesson’s objectives.

  2. Give students 5 to 15 seconds to formulate an answer to the question.

  3. Call on both volunteers and nonvolunteers

  4. Guide students to clarify and correct their responses

For more information on asking students questions check out Asking Questions To Improve Learning from from Washington University in St. Louis’s Teaching Center blog.

Minute Paper: Have students answer a question or prompt by writing a short paragraph. Collect these and use them to get a pulse of how well students understood a concept.

For more information on the minute paper check out The Minute Paper Tip Sheet from Tufts University Center for The Enhancement of Teaching and Learning.

Muddiest Point: Have students take 5 minutes to write down the most difficult or confusing part of the lesson and collect the responses.

For more information on muddiest point check out Muddiest Point from the MGH Institute for Health Professions.

Exit/Admin Tickets: Have students answer a question about the homework reading (an example question could be “based on last night’s reading, what is your understanding of ___?”) as the first activity when they come to class to quickly get a pulse of what they understood before class begins. At the end of class have students summarize what they learned, note the muddiest point, and/or write down any questions they still have.

For more information on exit/admin tickets check out Entrance and Exit Tickets from Brown University’s Harriet W. Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning.

Think-Pair-Share: Have students think about a question/prompt for 5 minutes and record their response, then have them pair with the person next to them and discuss what they wrote down. Then each pair shares out with the entire class what they discussed.

For more information on think-pair-share check out Think-Pair-Share from Stanford University’s Teaching Commons.

Four Corners: Designate each corner of the room as strongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree. Pose a question to students where they can choose a one of these stances. Have all students write out their choice and their reason for their choice on a piece of paper or index card. Then have students move to the corner of the room that corresponds to their choice. Have students discuss with the others in their corner their reasoning for the choice. After 2-3 minutes of discussion call on a few students to share their reasons with the class.

For more information on four corners check out Four Corners Activity: Multiple Perspectives from Butler University.

Response Cards: Create a set of cards for each student that includes the letters A, B, C… Pose multiple-choice questions for students throughout your lecture and have them hold up the card that corresponds to the correct answer.

Poll Questions: Pose questions for students throughout your lecture that they can answer using their cell phone or other device. Some free applications include Poll Everywhere, Socrative, and Go Soapbox. Don’t want students to use their cell phones? You can try Plickers.

For more information about poll questions check out our Apps for Formative Assessment handout.

Concept Maps: Students can work in groups or alone. Assign each person or group a topic to brainstorm key words about and have them organize them into a concept map.

For more information about concept maps check out Using Concept Maps from Carnegie Mellon University’s Eberly Center.

Inside Outside Circle: Split the class into two groups (one will form the inside circle and the other the outside circle). Provide a question or statement for the students to respond to. Give them a few minutes to think about a response. Then have the student in the inside circle share their response with the person across from them in the outside circle. Then have students move one person over to the left or right and have the outside students share their responses. This can continue for as long as you’d like or until everyone has shared their response. You can walk around the room and observe how well students have understood the information by the quality of their discussions.

For more information on inside outside circle check out Inside-Outside Circle from eWorkshop.

Short Quizzes: Give students short low-stakes quizzes on the content covered in the lesson.

For more information on short quizzes check out A Case For More Testing: The Benefits of Frequent, Low Stakes Assessments from Michigan State University’s Inside Teaching MSU blog.

Online

Survey Questions: Utilize Moodle’s questionnaire activity to ask students questions aligned to what they are learning. The questionnaire can be set to be anonymous giving students a risk-free way to show what they know and don’t know.

For instructions on how to set up questionnaires in Moodle check out this guide to Moodle questionnaire.

Low-Stakes Quizzes: Utilize Moodle’s quiz activity to give students short low-stakes quizzes on the content covered in the lesson.

For instructions on how to set up quizzes in Moodle check out this guide to Moodle quizzes.

One Minute Thread: This is a variation of the one-minute paper for the online environment. Have students answer a question or prompt, note the muddiest point, clearest point, or any questions they may still have by posting on a discussion forum.

Flipgrid: Flipgrid is an online tool that allows students to quickly and easily record 90 second video clips. Using Flipgrid have students record a video of themselves explaining a concept or answering a question.

Create a Flipgrid.

 
 
 

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