GOOGLE FORMative Assessment!

I am lucky enough to be teaching in a school that is going to a 1:1 environment with macbook airs for every student.  I was also blessed to be one of the "test teachers" asked to use a class set of macbook airs in preparation for the rollout coming up in about a week.  I was simply asked to try some things out and see what works and what doesn't work, to which I said.....HECK YA!  When someone offers you 30 macbook airs to use in your classroom the answer is always YES!

There were so many things I tried and had an awesome experience trying, as did the students!  However the one thing that I found the most helpful to me as a teacher was the Google Form formative assessment.  The Google form is easy to create, so making/creating a quick formative quiz for class is not time consuming at all.  The time it takes students to take them is very short as well (depending on how many questions you create of course!).  Need a "starter" for class, this is perfect!

I recently started using Schoology for an online platform, which has been great so far.  Schoology allows for me to take my Google Form and embed the quiz right into the site (which you can do with many other sites/platforms as well).  Nice for students as they can log into our class page and take the quiz right at the start of class and only have to visit the one website!  Quick and easy!

Below is an example of one of the quizzes I recently used in my classroom.

Students have google e-mail accounts through the school district, so I am able to have them log into our schools cloud page and that allows for it to recognize the user who is taking the quiz and gives me feedback for each indiviual student and what their responses were for each question.  **Side note, if your students do not have google accounts, you can simply make the first question a "choose from list" question and type in each students name.  This allows you to see the students name listed with their responses!**  Below is the spreadsheet that you will get when students submit the form.  Instant feedback for you to guide your instruction!!

I was able to use this data to see who was missing specific ideas and who I needed to focus on in the coming days as we continued to work through our human body systems unit.  The information provided above, allows for you to call each student up and review with them how they did, and correct any misconceptions that may have had.  I have done this when students are working on other work, and it's great, a quick quiet 1-on-1 conversation about content.  There are many days this just isn't possible, however, not doing anything with the data would be a complete waste of the time used to take the quiz!  Covering the results with the entire class works great as well, and below is a great way to do this without revealing names with responses!


Here is a look at the "summary" screen which can be found at the top of the spreadsheet of responses under the "Form" drop-down at the top of the page.  This will give you the results/data in the form of graphs with the question listed and percentages for each answer.  I projected this summary on the screen in my room and my students really liked this a lot!  They could see how they did, and we could discuss why some answers may have been selected.  This discussion is great, and will most often help clear up any misconceptions for the students who may have incorrectly selected those answers.

No matter how you use the form or the data you receive from it, this will change how you teach and shift gears from one topic to another!  Google Forms at it's best, allowing teachers to formatively assess students and get instant feedback/data to use for driving instruction!  Every teacher could and should use this tool and the ease of use makes it difficult to say no to!

How do you use Google Forms in the classroom?  Would love to hear how others are using this awesome tool!!