A formative assessment is a way for educators to get an accurate gauge of how students are retaining information, whether they are understanding what is going on, and whether or not their lessons are understandable and comprehensible.
Assessing student knowledge and understanding is a crucial part of any instructional strategy, but there are several ways to do it. We are all familiar with homework, examinations, and quizzes, but a formative assessment can be just as meaningful. But what is a formative assessment?
A formative assessment is a continuous process that helps uncover student learning and improves their understanding of specific topics and subjects. Formative assessment examples include open-ended questions, multiple-choice polls or quizzes, or feedback forms or questionnaires.
In short, a formative assessment (or formative evaluation) is a way to monitor student learning while it happens, thus adjusting teaching methods and lesson plans accordingly. Many define formative assessment as an “assessment for learning.” This method is often an ideal way for educators to gauge how well students are retaining information, whether they understand what is going on, and whether or not lessons are comprehensible. They are not designed to be graded, and are constructed to be simple and offer a basic reading of students’ comprehension.
We’ve pulled together several examples of formative assessments you can try today. Let’s dive in.
1. Live multiple-choice poll
Best for: A quick assessment
No matter if you are discussing World War II or the different past tenses in French, a live multiple choice poll asking questions — whether about students’ existing understanding of the lesson’s content, what knowledge they’ve gained, or what they want to learn next — is the most basic and valuable form of formative assessment.
These quick-hitter questions can be more informative than simply asking students, “Is that clear for everyone?”. Using a tool that can both run this poll and visualize results means it can fit seamlessly into the lesson without wasting time.
2. Open-ended questions
Best for: Generating discussion
Asking students to recall what they learned previously can help you gauge what important information has been retained and what may have been overlooked. An open-ended question requires students to recall and reflect on what they have learned and construct an answer in their own words.
Neither questions nor responses need to be overly complex or detailed. Instead, they can be as simple as “What was the most interesting thing we discussed yesterday?” This allows you to see what students found compelling and which topics come up most and least frequently.
3. Feedback forms or questionnaires
Best for: Making continuous improvements
Once you’ve gone through your lecture or seminar, how can you be sure that your students retained anything and that their eyes didn’t glaze over twenty minutes in? A survey can help clear things up and also help you accurately evaluate how things went. As with a live poll or open-ended question, a survey doesn’t necessarily need to be 10 or 15 questions long; it can be short, sweet, and to the point.
For instance, you can ask students if they found the lecture informative, engaging enough to make concentration easy, or enjoyable.
4. Quick answer scales
Best for: Visualizing feedback on a scale
Asking students to write down answers can potentially be time-consuming as they formulate ideas and consider how best to word their responses. Likewise, it can take some time to go through each answer, draw solid conclusions, identify patterns, and gather insights.
Providing students with set responses in the form of scaled questions can eliminate much of this additional time, as they can respond almost immediately. Additionally, you can swiftly and clearly see from a graph of answers how the average responses look and whether there are notable outliers.
5. Short answer word clouds
Best for: Visualizing feedback in words
If you’re looking for clear and concise responses, simply ask students to submit a one-word or short response to a question. This will require them to carefully consider before submitting their answers. Then, everyone’s answers will show up in a dynamic visual, with the most common showing up the largest. This can also help you parse through answers much quicker than if they contained full or multiple sentences.
6. Emoji survey
Best for: A lightweight student assessment
Anyone unfortunate enough to spend time in the hospital is probably familiar with the Wong-Baker pain scale, in which patients rate their pain level by selecting an emoticon that represents their feelings. Travelers may also have seen something similar in airports and train stations when asked about security services or how happy they were with the available services. So why not introduce something similar to your classroom or lecture theater?
These are simple and effective scales that can be customized to ask any question you like. Respondents are presented with uncomplicated answers that take little to no time to submit.
7. First to five
Best for: Low-pressure self-assessments
First to five is a visual assessment strategy in which students show their level of understanding by holding up one of their hands in positions ranging from a fist (representing zero fingers) to five fingers. A fist communicates a complete lack of understanding, while a full hand up means they have a strong grasp of the material.
This is a super fast, easy-to-do assessment that you can run at any point during a lesson to gauge the current levels of comprehension.
8. Think-pair-share
Best for: Collaboration and active processing
The think-pair-share exercise invites students to consider a question or prompt, discuss their ideas with a partner, and finally share their findings with the larger group. This method is beneficial as it allows students to reflect, refine their opinion through active discussion and learning from others, and build confidence before and while speaking publicly. It’s useful whether you want to assess (or remind students of) prior knowledge or evaluate how well they’re learning new content.
9. Quick write
Best for: Assessing critical thinking and comprehension
A quick write activity allows students to write out a response to a prompt or question within a timed window, often just a few minutes. It’s an ideal strategy for documenting spontaneous thoughts or ideas, evaluating understanding of concepts, and encouraging written expression. Quick writes often work especially well at the beginning or end of a class or module to assess prior knowledge and/or gains in knowledge.
10. Signal cards
Best for: Receiving immediate feedback
Ask students to use color-coded cards — for instance, red, green, and yellow — to indicate their understanding. When a student holds up a green card, that means they understand well, while a yellow card signals uncertainty, and a red card indicates a need for additional help. This approach offers real-time insight to teachers, letting them adjust instruction as necessary. Plus, it empowers even the quietest student to share their feedback without speaking aloud.
11. Gamified quizzes
Best for: High student engagement
Gamification can make assessments more fun, engaging, and interactive — after all, who doesn’t love a classroom game every now and then? With platforms like Mentimeter, you can transform a stale assessment into a competitive game that makes students hungry to learn. Gamified quizzes, for example, can help teachers reinforce concepts, identify knowledge gaps, and boost classroom participation.
12. Handheld clickers
Best for: Anonymous and real-time data collection
Students can use handheld clickers to submit answers to multiple-choice questions without identifying themselves. This process lets you collect and share responses without making any student feel uncomfortable or spending time to collect verbal responses from a large class. As you collect responses, you’ll gain insight into knowledge levels, areas that need attention, and opportunities to foster more discussion.
13. Concept mapping
Best for: Connecting ideas
A concept map is a visual diagram illustrating the relationship between multiple ideas or concepts. Students can build concept maps demonstrating how topics are connected, which reinforces their understanding and helps teachers assess student knowledge. This method is helpful to close out a unit or to help prepare students for an upcoming test, as it can bring to light gaps or confusion.
14. Carousel brainstorming
Best for: Group brainstorming
While not quite as fun as riding an old-school carousel at a theme park, this formative assessment allows students to get up and moving while assessing their knowledge. Students rotate around the classroom to contribute to different stations or diagrams (like, for instance, a concept map). They’ll get a chance to see and build upon peers’ ideas, and teachers will gain insight into students’ creativity, collaboration, and thought processes.
15. Four corners
Best for: Arguing opinions
To set up a four corners activity, turn each corner of the room into a representation of a different opinion or answer — for instance, strongly agree, agree, disagree, and strongly disagree. Then, ask students to go to the corner that best aligns with their views. Once there, they’ll discuss their viewpoint with their peers. A format like this helps you assess students’ understanding, clarify any misinformation, and get the group talking.
16. Human barometer
Best for: Gauging understanding on a spectrum
A human barometer is a physical space or line on which students position themselves based on their level of agreement, understanding, or confidence in a particular concept. For example, you could set the spectrum as “fully understand” and “don’t understand at all,” and ask students to pick a spot and explain their reasoning. Then, you’ll have a stronger understanding of who needs help and who has mastered the topic, and who knows either more or less than they thought!
17. Jigsaw check-in
Best for: Peer teaching
The jigsaw check-in turns students into teachers, giving each of them a piece of a topic on which to become an expert. With their newfound expertise, they must present to the group to teach the material. This method involves students directly in their own (and their peers’) learning, which facilitates a strong sense of ownership. It’s also a helpful way for teachers to sit back and observe how well students have understood a particular concept.
18. Role-playing and simulations
Best for: Applying learning in real context
Engage students with active role-playing or simulation activities that let them experience concepts in action. Not only can this type of activity help hammer home knowledge, but it’s also a great way for teachers to assess how well students can apply their understanding in a real-world context. As role-playing can help foster empathy, it’s especially useful in subjects like history, social studies, or others where understanding multiple perspectives is key.
19. Annotated text
Best for: Critical thinking and reading comprehension
Ask students to annotate a text (whether on paper or digitally) as they see fit — highlighting main points, asking questions, or summarizing key information — and use that to assess the students’ reading comprehension and understanding of the information. Because you’re also giving them the chance to surface questions or realizations, you can evaluate their critical thinking, too. Consider using audience response software that includes annotation features.
20. 3-2-1 approach
Best for: Reflection
When you use the 3-2-1 strategy, you’ll ask students to write down three things they've learned, two questions they have, and one thing they found especially interesting. This gives them a chance to reflect on their own knowledge and understanding while thinking critically about the material, and it gives you a way to get insight into what information stuck, what’s not clear, and what sparked curiosity among your students. Because it’s a reflective activity, it’s best used at the end of a module or lesson.
21. Traffic light summary
Best for: Self-monitoring
Ask students to label their understanding of a topic or concept using the colors of a traffic light: red for confusion, yellow for uncertainty, and green for mastery. They can do this in a notebook, on a post-it note, or digitally — or, of course, with the signal cards we mentioned earlier. This is a quick way for students to consider their own clarity and for educators to assess readiness to move forward.
22. Fill-in-the-blank exercises
Best for: Checking recall and content mastery
Especially helpful in subjects where precise terminology is critical (such as language or science), a fill-in-the-blank exercise has students fill in the missing word or phrase from a sentence or paragraph. The more the student gets right, the better their mastery, and educators can use this to pinpoint any gaps in understanding.
23. Peer reviews
Best for: Collaborative critical thinking
The peer review method allows students to work together to further their learning. Students can assess each other’s work, comparing it to a rubric or using guiding questions to help them evaluate. The process helps reinforce what quality work looks like while promoting self-reflection and letting students help each other. Teachers can observe the process or collect and review peer feedback to assess student understanding of the material and the evaluation standards.
24. Self-assessments
Best for: Encouraging ownership and autonomy
Use a self-assessment activity to get students thinking about their learning, effort, and progress. As with peer assessments, these can be based upon a specific rubric or guided assessment questions. As students evaluate their knowledge, they take on more ownership of their education. At the same time, teachers can use these assessments to gain insight into students' perception of their knowledge and compare it to actual performance.
25. Discussion forums
Best for: Virtual or blended settings
Live discussions may be hard to come by if you’ve got a hybrid or virtual classroom. Online discussion boards are a great substitute. They allow students to respond in writing to specific prompts or questions, sharing their reasoning and understanding while building strong written communication skills. From there, educators can use the answers to evaluate communication abilities, critical thinking, and reasoning.
26. Think-aloud
Best for: Understanding students' thought processes
A think-aloud lets students verbalize their thoughts out loud as they solve a problem or interpret content. Educators will have a window into students’ thought processes and how they approach a problem, which helps address any misconceptions or knowledge gaps. Some students learn better by doing this, too, making it doubly beneficial, especially for topics like math or coding.
27. Teach to a friend
Best for: Reinforcing knowledge through peer explanation
Rather than having one student teach to a group, this method lets students break into pairs and teach each other. Explaining the material out loud can help drive it home for the student doing the teaching and the one doing the learning. As an educator, you can observe these interactions and note students’ level of mastery and understanding, as well as their ability to communicate their ideas.
28. Hypothetical questions
Best for: Stimulating critical thinking and real-life application
Asking, “What if?” or posing hypothetical questions can encourage students to apply their knowledge to new or unique scenarios. Not only is this a fresh way for students to think about the material, but it’s also a great way for educators to gauge student understanding and ability to apply it to new contexts. This type of exercise is most applicable to subjects like social studies, ethics, or science.
Benefits of formative assessments
It’s clear that formative assessments help teachers and students assess learning and mastery, but there are plenty of other benefits. Here are a few ways formative assessments can transform your classroom:
- Give students a platform: Providing students with a platform to voice and express their thoughts and opinions helps develop a culture of sharing without anxiety or fear.
- Boost participation: Regular assessments keep students actively involved in their learning process and encourage consistent study habits.
- Increase feedback: Both students and instructors receive immediate feedback on learning progress, allowing for quick adjustments in teaching and learning strategies.
- Less pressure: Students experience less pressure than high-stakes summative assessments, as no grades are involved.
Formative vs. summative assessments
Formative assessments can easily be confused with other types of assessments, especially summative assessments (or summative evaluations). When we think of assessments and evaluations, summative assessment examples often come to mind — often in the form of high-stakes graded assignments like examinations, finals, quizzes, and papers.
Formative assessment is a continuous process that can be run on a day-to-day or even a lesson-by-lesson basis, while summative assessments tend to take place at the end of chapters, semesters, or years. Both work to inform educators how students are progressing and work in tandem to paint a picture of classroom performance.
Another key difference between formative and summative assessment is that summative assessment evaluates what students know, what information they’ve retained, and how they’re performing. Formative assessments help educators understand if lessons, lectures, and assignments are providing students with the necessary framework to comprehend and retain information.
| Aspect | Formative Assessment | Summative Assessment |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Assess and improve learning throughout instruction | Assess students’ learning at the end of an instructional period |
| Timing | Ongoing and often frequent | Typically, after a unit, course, or term ends |
| Stakes | Low-stakes, ungraded | Higher-stakes, often graded |
| Feedback | Teachers and students | Teachers, students, administrators, or external bodies such as school boards or Boards of Education |
| Instructional Impact | Informs teaching adjustments | Evaluates the effectiveness of prior instruction and assesses student outcomes |
What to do with formative assessments?
Now that you have a series of formative assessment examples, you may wonder what you can do with the feedback and insight you receive. Ideally, you’ll gain useful insights to improve lesson plans, highlight ways you can adapt your teaching method, or underline things that may have caused confusion.
Formative assessment lets you continuously monitor situations and look at trends over time. This gives you a clearer picture of the situation and lets you see how students' responses change as you adjust.
Formative assessment example FAQs
There’s a lot to understand about formative assessments, and we’ve got some helpful answers to frequently asked questions right here.
What are the 4 types of formative assessment?
Four main types of formative assessment include dialogic (or discussion-based), observation-based, peer- and self-assessments, and written or product-based assessments. These can be used on their own or in combination to provide holistic insight into a student’s learning.
How can educators effectively integrate these formative assessment examples into various subjects or lesson plans?
Educators can integrate formative assessments by aligning them with learning objectives and tailoring the assessment methods to the content being taught. For instance, you can use exit surveys to gauge understanding of the day's lesson in any subject, while peer reviews might be more suited to writing assignments or projects. Making sure that the form of assessment matches the learning goals is important. You should also vary the assessment methods to keep students engaged.
What are some challenges teachers might face when implementing formative assessments and how can they be overcome?
One challenge is the potential increase in workload for teachers. To mitigate this, educators can use digital tools that automate the collection and analysis of assessment data. Another challenge is ensuring that all students participate and receive feedback in a timely manner. Establishing a classroom culture that values regular feedback and using group assessments can encourage broader participation.
Can these formative assessment techniques be adapted for remote or online learning environments?
Yes, you can adapt many formative assessment techniques for online learning. Digital platforms like Mentimeter offer interactive quizzes, polls, and Q&A sessions that you can use remotely for assessments. Educators can also use discussion forums, online journals, and breakout rooms in virtual classrooms to facilitate peer reviews and collaborative projects.
How can teachers ensure that formative assessments are inclusive and cater to diverse learning needs and styles?
To ensure inclusivity, educators should offer a variety of assessment methods that cater to different learning styles, such as visual, auditory, and kinesthetic. Cultural and language differences affect how students understand and engage with tasks. Providing clear instructions, offering choices in how students demonstrate their learning, and using universal design principles can help make assessments more accessible to all students.
What tools or technologies are recommended for conducting these formative assessments effectively?
Many digital tools can enhance formative assessments, including learning management systems (LMS) like Google Classroom or Moodle, interactive platforms like Mentimeter, and collaborative tools such as Google Docs or Padlet. As AI continues to improve, teachers may also find AI prompts helpful. These technologies can facilitate real-time feedback, increase student engagement, and simplify the collection and analysis of assessment data.
Use Mentimeter to make formative assessment engaging and effective
With plenty of formative assessment examples, you're well on your way to gathering helpful insight into student learning trends and patterns. While integrating formative assessments into your lesson plans may take time, technology can help, especially a tool like Mentimeter.
Whether you want to run live polls and surveys or prefer open-ended questionnaires, Mentimeter has a variety of interactive slides that make it straightforward for students to respond immediately and anonymously. Our tool integrates seamlessly into your presentation and course material or can simply be used in a second tab or screen. Plus, you can download results from each presentation and analyze trends over time, letting you uncover actionable insights that benefit you and your students.
Try Mentimeter today and get started with powerful formative assessments.
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