Formative Assessment

Exit Tickets - Short tasks students hand in at the end of class completed on a small piece of paper or index card and may include a writing assignment, a short quiz, or a single question. 

Opportunities to Respond - An opportunity to respond (OTR) is a teaching strategy that elicits student responses by posing questions or comments that give students multiple occasions to answer. Below are more examples. 

• • White Boards - Teachers ask all students to answer a question on their individual whiteboards, then hold them up simultaneously. Teachers can then lead a clarifying discussion if there are conflicting answers. 

  • Response Cards - Response cards include index cards with a "yes" on one side and a "no" on the other or cards with red, yellow, and green on them. Teachers ask students to answer questions by holding up the appropriate card for their answers simultaneously with their classmates. 

  • Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down, Thumbs Wiggly - Students respond to questions through their thumbs: thumbs up means they understand/agree, thumbs down means they don't understand/agree, and holding thumbs horizontally and wiggling means they're not sure if they understand/agree. 

Turn-To-Your-Neighbor - After students complete their learning task, teachers can ask them to compare their answer or idea with a neighboring student to see if they have the same answer. If yes, students give the teacher a thumbs up. If no, students give the teacher a thumbs down. 

Hot Potato - The teacher asks students a question to test their understanding of the content. If the student gets the answer right,  they get to ask another question that tests another student's understanding. The student asking the question must know the answer so they can confirm whether or not the new student gave the correct answer. 

Graphic Organizers -  Asking students to create graphic organizers is a good check of student understanding because in most cases students won't be able to create correct graphic organizers unless they understand the content. 

Jigsaw - The jigsaw strategy is a cooperative learning technique where students work in groups to become “experts” on different sections of a topic and then teach what they’ve learned to their peers. The strategy promotes collaboration, active learning, and accountability. It is structured to encourage each student to contribute meaningfully to group learning and ensures that everyone’s participation is vital to the overall understanding of the content.

Gallery Walk - Students are organized into groups to create a poster on chart paper to display in the room. The poster should demonstrate the student's knowledge of the content covered. Once the groups have finished, new groups are formed that include a member from each initial group. The groups then walk around the room, stopping at each poster. Whoever created the poster explains it to the rest of the new group.  

Four Corners/Value Line  - Students move to a location of the room based on their answer to a question. For example, a teacher might pose a multiple-choice question and designate each different corner as A, B, C, or D (four corners) or a value along a number line and ask students to move to the location on the line they believe corresponds to the value/answer (value line).

Paraphrasing - Teachers can assess student understanding by asking students to retell in their own words what they have learned.