- Many tool and apps help students receive ongoing assessment in engaging ways. Try assessing students regularly with these options- clickers, exit tickets, admission slips, ongoing portfolios, student response systems, graphic organizers, peer feedback, self-evaluation, draw responses, games, and quizzes.
- Some of my favorite tools and apps for formative assessment include Nearpod (Any device), Socrative.com (Any device), GetKahoot (Any device), and ExitTicket (Any device).
- The West Virginia Department of Education has a fantastic formative assessment page with many examples and handouts.
- When giving exit slips/tickets/cards, make sure this is at the end of class and something that can be accomplished within 5 minutes or less.
- Check out this slide with many suggestions, including the 321 Exit! Get students to use Google Docs to fill out these exit slips digitally and keep a copy!
- Find a Tweet exit slip here!
- Admit slips are given at the beginning of the class to help students reflect on their homework or the previous assignment and should also be accomplished in 5 minutes or less.
- It is more powerful to get students to come up with their own questions and test their peers than to just answer multiple choice questions.
- Get students to create games on TinyTap (iOS/Android) or GetKahoot (Any device).
- Throw a small nerf ball to a student who answers your question then creates a question for another peer to answer. The students asks the question aloud and throws the ball to a selected peer. Allow them to have 3 helplines such as search the textbook or a website or get a peer to text the answer to them.
- Try assessment with interactive whiteboard tools and apps like Educreations, SyncSpace (iOS/Android), Explain Everything, and ScreenChomp.
- Students can come up with their own word problems to solve or show how they solved a word problem. See this example by Mrs. Wideen’s first graders using Educreations!
- Students can give quick peer feedback. One 5 minute peer feedback activity is Two Stars and a Wish. Students upload the peer’s short writing or creation onto the whiteboard and draw a star on two areas they like and with their voice provide specific feedback. They also include a wish, an area they want their peers to improve.
- Students can contribute reflections, fact, trivia and resources about a topic using the Padlet or Linoit web tool and app (any device).
- I Spy is a type of formative assessment in which students take photos to reflect their learning. Find this activity in my book, Learning to Go: Lesson Ideas for Mobile Devices.
- To assess with video quizzes try Blubbr.tv (Interactive Youtube quizzes) and EdPuzzle.
- If you don’t have a set of clickers, then try Plickers for formative assessment. It is a free app for teachers to use their mobile devices to scan paper markers students hold up to answer a question. Live results are shown!
