Fun Formative (and Summative) Assessment Ideas

When someone says the word assessment the majority of educators and students automatically think 'test.' While tests are apart of assessments, it is only a small portion. There are multiple ways that we can assess students understanding that doesn't require multiple choice questions. After all, does multiple choice questions really tell us as educators whether a student truly understandings the content. 

Here are a couple ideas you can use to assess you students that will hopefully engage them more than a paper/pencil exam. 

Online Assessments with Quizizz

Quizizz is a great relatively new website that allows teachers to steal, borrow, and create online assessments for students. Quizizz has been compared to Kahoot, as it awards points for answering questions correctly, but there are a couple features that I found I like better. First, it shows the question and answers on the student devices, so no more looking back and forth from teacher's display to student device. Second, it allows the students to take the quiz at their own pace (up to 15 minutes per question). In addition, it has a homework feature. 

In the tutorial video you will learn:

• how to duplicate an entire quiz from someone else
• how to edit someone else's quiz to make your own
• how to create your own quiz
• how to borrow individual questions off of someone else's quiz
• how to adjust time limit per question
• how to reorder questions
• how to push out assessment live or as homework
• what the teacher view looks like during and after a quiz
• what the student view looks like during and after a quiz

Get Student Feedback Using Geddit

I just discovered Geddit and am in love. This is an awesome assessment for learning tool. 

Here is why Geddit is so awesome!

Student Accounts
Student have the ability to sign in with a Google account or create an account. Students do NOT need an email address to create an account. They can give a username instead. 

Once they have logged in to Geddit, the teacher will give the students a code to join his/her class.

Students Can Check-in
Geddit allows students to "check-in" with the teacher to let them know how they are feeling about the lesson. The teacher is the only person who can see the students' response, so they can answer without fear of judgement. Here are the students' choices:

• I don't understand this :(
• I think I get it?
• I'm OK with this
• I've got this
• Easy, I could teach my friend

Teachers Can Push Out Questions

Teachers can create separate lessons filled with questions to ask students. The teacher then pushes out each question to all the students at the right time. Teachers have the ability to create standard questions (multiple choice, short answer, long answer, or poll) or a math question. 

There is even the ability to ask a question on the fly, by creating a quick question. For the quick question the students will see A-D for multiple choice, T/F for true and false, box for short answer and A-D for a poll. Verbally give the students the question and answer choices and push out a quick question. 

If your classroom is not 1:1, that is okay. Ask questions where students have to answer in a group.

Show Students Class Data

Teachers have the ability to share with students how the class as a whole answered a question. It will not show the students individual answers. Teachers can use this to have class discussions on why some students might have answered a particular way. 

Student Data

Teachers can pull up individual students to see how they answered all of the questions, as well as send them a private message that will show up only on their screen. This is a great way to redirect a student without embarrassing them or give a student encouragement when you see they are frustrated. 

Share Lessons with Other Teachers

After the lesson ends the teacher can export the data to see how all students performed and get a whole class picture. You can also share your lessons with your colleagues, so they do not have to reinvent the wheel. No student data will be transferred when you share a lesson. 

If you haven't tried Geddit, I highly recommend you check it out.