7 Low-Stakes Formative Assessment Activities

Quick, mid-lesson checks for understanding are a crucial way to evaluate student progress and comprehension without relying on—or waiting for—intimidating, high-stakes exams at the end of a unit. These 7 formative assessment activities are quick, fun, and useful for spotting fuzzy understanding in real time—which is important when gauging whether to move on or circle back for a reteach. 

Creativity is at the heart of an Idea Doodle, where students are tasked with visually representing the day’s concept with a quick drawing. Seeing how they translate their ideas into a visual format without the help of language makes it clear how solidly the class has grasped the day’s teaching. 

The next set of strategies are all about speed. With Rapid Recall, Quick Sort, and Whiteboard Relay, students react quickly to complete a challenge that tests their comprehension. The teacher flashes a word, symbol, or image to the class and poses a connected question for Rapid Recall, and students then call out their answer as quickly as possible. Similarly, in a whiteboard relay, groups of students race to answer a set of questions the quickest, placing the miniature whiteboard on their head when finished. For the bell ringer activity called Quick Sort, students compete to match vocabulary terms to corresponding concepts and prove that they completed the previous night’s homework assignment.

One-Question Quiz is a mini assessment that poses a single question to the class at a critical moment. Their responses—whether written in individual whiteboards, jotted down on a sheet of paper, or shared via a student response system—will offer an up-to-the-minute glimpse of how well they are grasping the material. 

Formative assessments are also helpful for designing successive lessons, as shown in the strategies Help Me Plan and Student Takeaways. In Help Me Plan, students are brought into the lesson planning process and divided into small groups to give feedback on how much they absorbed from class and what felt most difficult. In Student Takeaways, each class member is asked to write one concrete takeaway from the day on the board. Both strategies require students to express the headline concepts from the day’s lesson and, in doing so, reveal the parts that remain murky. 

For lots more classroom-tested activities for formative assessment, check out the Edutopia articles “29 High-Impact Formative Assessment Strategies” by Paige Tutt, “13 Super-Quick Formative Assessments” from Todd Finley, “7 Smart, Fast Ways to Do Formative Assessment” from Laura Thomas, or “28 Ways to Quickly Check for Understanding” by Daniel Leonard.