Formative assessment is assessment for learning rather than assessment of learning. It is a way to check for understanding along the way and guide teacher decisions about future instruction. It allows teachers to differentiate instruction and ideally occurs on a daily basis. This can feel overwhelming due to the competing interest of covering material. But, reflecting and checking for understanding is an important part of learning. It helps students get a better sense of how they are doing and teachers know what needs review and what doesn’t. Formative assessment apps can help with the time aspect. They are easy to implement, ensure that all students are heard from, and organize the results into quick to understand bar graphs, pie charts, or excel spreadsheets allowing teachers to easily see if the class is ready to move on. Tony Vincent has put together an excellent blog post called “Know Students Better: 16 Tools for Formative Assessment” where he details the ins and outs of 16 different formative assessment apps. Many of the apps are the same but some offer short answer, others offer premade exit tickets, fast past quizzes, or drawing features. I encourage you to read through the brief descriptions of each app and choose 1 or 2 to try out and work into your repertoire of formative assessment strategies. Do you use one of these apps regularly? Which one is your favorite?
