Ever wonder what formative assessment types you should be using in your high school classroom? The short answer is that many different types of formative assessment are out there. I love using quick and easy formative checks for understanding to help provide mastery-oriented feedback to my students. I have tried many different formative assessments, leading me to create this list of the 7 best! Hopefully you will find this list helpful as you plan your next assessment!

Before we jump in, if you want to create students that are expert learners, then check out this resource that will help you to implement standards-based grading in your high school classroom. This step-by-step guide will show you what you need to get started on your setting up your grading system. Become a standards-based grading rockstar today!

Why formative assessment is important

There are many different formal definitions out there for formative assessment, but most teachers and researchers agree that formative assessment is a tool to assess student understanding during the learning process. It is meant to provide teachers with important information regarding how to adjust instruction. Students can use this assessment for self-reflection to adjust their learning tactics.

Formative assessment is an extremely important tool to ensure learning is happening in the classroom. These quick checks for understanding can ultimately support student learning when exercised appropriately in the classroom. Teachers collect evidence of where students are in terms of their mastery of standards. Students can use this evidence to monitor their own learning and make adjustments where necessary.

These types of assessments are different from summative assessments. A summative assessment is an assessment of learning rather than an assessment for learning. The summative assessment comes at the end of instruction. Formative assessments should occur during instruction. Examples of summative assessments include tests or end-of-unit projects.

I have come to love using formative assessments throughout my lessons to help improve my own instruction but to also allow my students to reflect on their mastery. Together, we are all working to improve which ultimately creates the best possible learning environment. Let me show you the 7 best formative assessment types that I use in my high school science classroom!

Types of formative assessment that you can use with high school students

1. Exit tickets for the end of a lesson

One of the most commonly used formative assessment types is the use of the exit ticket. An exit ticket can come in many different forms. The idea is to ask students a question(s) at the end of a lesson to gauge their understanding of the objective. 

Each lesson should have a clearly defined objective. Some schools may even make teachers write their objectives on the board to reference at any point in the lesson. I personally keep my objectives written on my daily agenda slide. At the beginning of class, I talk to students about the lesson’s goal.

At the end of the lesson, students know they must complete an exit ticket. This exit ticket assesses their mastery of the lesson’s objective. For example, if the objective is that students can identify the difference between biotic and abiotic factors, then at the end of class, there will be some type of question to see if students can in fact identify the difference between these factors.

I personally like to use more open-ended questions that truly allow me to get a sense of student understanding. If a student can state the right answer and an explanation about that answer, then they have shown mastery. A student that can get the right answer but does not provide a solid explanation is only meeting the standard. But you could also use other types of questions, like multiple choice, matching, etc.

Usually, my exit ticket is one question so that it can be completed within the last 5 minutes of class. To help make the process of exit tickets more efficient, I project a question on the board. Students have access to a Google Form (posted in Google Classroom) where they submit their answers. This allows for quick grading on my part. It also removes the need to pass out slips of paper and take piles of exit slips home with me at the end of the day.

2. Mini whiteboards for quick checks for understanding

Of all the formative assessment types that I love to use in my science classroom, my favorite is to use mini whiteboards. This relatively inexpensive, low-tech tool can make formative assessments more fun for students. 

I thankfully inherited a set of mini whiteboards from a previous teacher. But these can easily be purchased at the dollar store or Amazon. You may even be able to use dry-erase markers right on the desks (just make sure it wipes off easily before trying it with students).

I like to use mini whiteboards when we are reviewing information. I can pose a question to the class and students work together to formulate their response on the whiteboard. Once everyone has had a chance to respond, groups hold up their whiteboards. I can quickly see the level of understanding across the class. They can be used for vocabulary review, math practice, as well as drawing concepts. I have even used them for relay race games where each student in a group was responsible for some part of the problem. The whiteboard would be passed off between each member of the group.

For whatever reason, I find students become more engaged when using whiteboards (especially writing on desks) than if we were to do the same activity on paper. Students have fun with it. It allows you to quickly assess the understanding of the class to make any adjustments necessary in your instruction.

3. Clicker questions

Similarly to mini whiteboards, the next type of formative assessment is using clicker questions. The concept is the same in the sense you are posing a question to the class but instead of writing responses via a whiteboard, students are responding with a clicker.

Generally, clicker questions are multiple choice questions. Students respond by selecting their answer choice with their clicker. In real-time, the teacher can quickly see how students answered. The teacher can determine if students are understanding or if further instruction needs to be provided.

There are many different types of clicker options for this type of assessment with varying levels of tech and cost. The cheapest, lowest-tech option I have seen came from a college professor I had. She gave each student 4 sheets of paper, each of a different color. She instructed us that green represented choice A, blue = B, yellow = C, and white = D. Then she would ask a question and then each student held up the sheet of paper that corresponded with the correct answer choice. A simple, yet effective version of a clicker question.

Another option that is low cost but slightly more techy is the use of Plicker cards. All you need are the QR code cards and one smartphone. You can sign up online for free and download a set of QR code cards to be used by your students. Just print the cards and pass them out to the class. You create the question on the app. Students hold their QR codes a certain way depending on their answer selection and the teacher scans all the QR codes with their phone to collect the responses. On the screen, it will provide a breakdown of the student responses.

4. Interactive presentations with formative assessment templates

This next type of formative assessment involves creating interactive presentations. Think of classes you had where a teacher stood at the front of the room lecturing and pretty much putting you to sleep. I can think of quite a few. Well, these days are no more with some pretty cool apps that allow you to create interactive slideshows.

Tools like Pear Deck and Nearpod allow you to take simple Google Slide presentations and make them more engaging with real-time, interactive questions. If you have not tried out either of these tools, then stop what you are doing right now and go check them out! They are total game changers when it comes to formative assessments.

Pear Deck and Nearpod offer very similar services. Essentially both allow you to add interactive questions such that when you are presenting your slides, the audience joins your presentation on their device with a join code. When a question is posed, audience members respond on their devices. 

For formative assessments during the process of learning, this type of tool is amazing. You can embed open-ended questions, multiple choice, drawing, matching, etc. into the presentation. You can explain something and immediately see how well students understand what you just talked about. This allows you to immediately adjust practice if necessary. Like how cool is that?!?

5. Learning games to make formative assessment fun

A student favorite when it comes to formative assessment types is learning games. There are so many amazing apps out there for teachers to make games to review material. Some of the favorites are Kahoot, Quizizz, Quizlet Live, and Gimkit to name a few. 

Generally, these tools are used after instruction as a means of review. Most often, questions are multiple-choice or true/false. Students join the game via computer or phone (app). 

The teacher must create a game ahead of time or find a pre-made one from the library of games offered in the app. The teacher then starts the game and provides a join code for students. Questions appear on the screen and students select the answer on their devices.

These learning games are super interactive and engaging as they often reward students with points for being correct and quick. Gimkit has players competing for “money” making it even more engaging as they can earn money for correct questions and purchase power-ups.

But no matter the game, the teacher can see a report of the questions students got right and determine any areas of further improvement.

6. Surveys can be used as a type of formative assessment

This particular formative assessment type is geared more towards students than teachers in terms of adjustment to practice. Surveys are a powerful tool to allow students to reflect on their learning to get a deeper understanding of what they know and don’t know.

You can pose questions to have students reflect on their learning process, and their overall understanding, and have them make connections to other material in the course.

If your students reflect on their learning and feel as though they are not mastering the material, then you as the teacher can have bigger conversations with that student about what they need to do to improve. Students need to be able to recognize themselves when they don’t understand something.

One of the best ways to have students reflect on their learning is to create Google Form surveys. I love using Google Forms to create surveys because it is an easy way to collect responses from the entire class. It will keep the responses which can be exported to a spreadsheet for easier viewing and comparison. Google Forms is also super user-friendly for creating surveys. I save these surveys year after year.

7. In-class assignments

I save this one for last because I think this type of formative assessment will get the most head turns. My belief is that in-class activities represent formative assessment and therefore should not have a grade associated with them.

For me, all in-class work as practice work. Usually, the activity we are working on in class is to practice with the material that I just taught students. Therefore, most students are early in the learning process with this new material. So it does not make sense to assign a formal grade to something when students are just learning it for the first time.

Save time within the lesson to go over the activity and any questions associated with it. Even have students swap work so they can “grade” each other’s assignments and provide any feedback for improvement. If you go over the work, then there is definitely no need for a grade. And by going over it in class, you can get a sense if there was any part of the assignment that students were generally confused about. 

In-class activities act as a check for understanding rather than a graded assignment. These activities can guide future instruction based on how well students completed the work.

Most teachers believe that in order for students to complete assignments in class, they must have a grade attached to them. That is not true! I have conversations with my students about why we do these in-class assignments. I tell them that they are learning by participating and completing the work. If they choose to not complete the assignment, then it is going to be difficult for them to master the content.

Instead of giving a grade, I do make a note of who did and did not complete the assignment in my grade book. My learning management system allows me to use words like “done” or “not done” as grading symbols and I make these symbols have no weight on the grade. This allows me to communicate with students and families about the in-class work completion. I can show a parent that a student has not completed these formative assignments and how it has made it difficult for the student to reach mastery. This does hold students accountable when there is no number grade attached to the work.

Check out more assessment ideas here

7 smart, fast ways to do formative assessment

6 formative assessment examples and ideas

20 formative assessment examples to use in your college classroom

I absolutely love sharing my ideas related to my standards-based grading system and I hope that you find my ideas helpful for your classroom! After reading this, if you feel you are ready to take the plunge into standards-based grading in your high school classroom, sign up for my free guidebook to become an expert at standards-based grading! And let me know which of the formative assessment types is your favorite by leaving a comment below!