Formative Assessment Strategies That Actually Inform Instruction

Assessment is formative when you use the results to adjust instruction before the summative assessment. If you give an exit ticket but don't look at the results until the unit test, that's not formative — it's just extra work.

The defining feature of formative assessment is the feedback loop: check understanding → identify gaps → adjust instruction → check again. The faster this loop runs, the more effective your teaching becomes.

Fist-to-five: Students hold up fingers (1 = lost, 5 = confident). Gives you a room-wide pulse in 10 seconds. Follow up with targeted questions to the 1s and 2s.

Show-me whiteboards: Students write answers on mini whiteboards and hold them up. You see every answer instantly. Great for math, vocabulary, and short-answer checks.

Turn-and-talk with eavesdropping: Pose a question, students discuss with a partner, you circulate and listen to 4–5 pairs. You hear the range of understanding without putting anyone on the spot.

Hinge questions: A single question at a critical point in the lesson. If most students get it right, move on. If not, reteach before proceeding. The key is planning the question in advance and deciding your threshold (e.g., if fewer than 70% get it right, I'll reteach using a different model).

Think-pair-share with cold call: After pairs discuss, cold-call a few students. This gives you a sample of the room's thinking without relying on volunteers (who are usually the students who already understand).

Error analysis: Show a worked example with a deliberate mistake. Ask students to find and fix the error. This reveals whether students understand the concept well enough to spot misconceptions.

The best exit ticket has one question tied directly to the day's objective. Not three questions, not a mini-quiz — one question that tells you whether the student can do the thing you taught.

Sort exit tickets into three piles: got it, almost, not yet. Tomorrow's warm-up targets the 'almost' and 'not yet' piles. The 'got it' pile gets an extension or enrichment task.

Exit ticket formats that work: solve one problem and explain your steps, answer a question using evidence from today's text, draw and label a diagram of the concept.

Every LessonCraft lesson plan includes an assessment section with a student product, observable criteria, and a success indicator. Formative check suggestions appear within lesson sections so you know exactly when and how to gauge understanding during the lesson.