Formative Assessments Teaching Resources
Make formative assessment easy this school year with printable exit tickets, self-assessment cards and more teacher-created resources for your elementary or middle school classroom.
Each formative assessment printable or digital resource in this collection has undergone a careful review by one of the expert teachers on the Teach Starter team to ensure it's ready for your classroom and your students!
Curious about how to make formative assessments effective in your classroom? Read on for a primer from our teacher team!
What Is a Formative Assessment?
Formative assessment is a method of monitoring your students’ learning in the midst of your lessons. Because the goal is simply to assess if your students understood the lesson — and if you need to make adjustments in your teaching — there's no grading required.
This assessment type stands out from summative assessments, which are typically subject to grading. Summative assessments occur at the end of a learning progression and are solely focused on evaluating content mastery.
Why Are Formative Assessments Important?
When it comes to assessing students, formative assessments are a crucial tool in any teacher's toolbox because they give you a chance to provide feedback or make adjustments to your teaching quickly, and they come in handy for both you and your students.
As a teacher, a formative assessment helps you see where students might be struggling and address the problem immediately. For students, these brief knowledge checks help them identify their own weaknesses and ask for help.
Use our sticky note template to print lines on sticky notes for students to fill out a simple assessment with some details about what they've learned.
How to Make Your Formative Assessments Effective
Want to get the most out of your formative assessments? In addition to the countless assessment tools in this collection, our teacher team has created a list of ideas to help you enhance their effectiveness.
- Keep it simple. You don't have to reinvent the wheel to assess your students' basic understanding. Something as simple as just one or two questions on the main point of the lesson can be incredibly effective!
- Add these assessments to your classroom routines. In addition to being simple, these assessments should not take up a lot of classtime. Establishing a system and routine for different content will allow you to get the assessment done and move on to the next item on your classroom schedule in a timely manner.
- Don't take it personally. When students hand back an assessment that indicates your lesson did not come across the way you'd hoped, it can feel like a major letdown. It's important to allow yourself to adapt and learn from the experience, rather than taking it personally. Remember that even if one lesson worked last year, you have a whole new set of kids with their own individual needs!
- Be flexible. Nothing is more frustrating than having to revisit a lesson when you have so much to do and only so much instruction time. Remember this assessment data is simply making you a better teacher, and it's important to be flexible!
As noted before, these assessments should not be graded and should not carry any significant weight since they’re only part of the learning process! This enables students to answer without fear of penalty, making them substantially more effective.
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Multiplication and Division Minute Math Booklet
Warm-up (or assess) with this 10-page booklet of multiplication and division drills.
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3-2-1 Text Reflection Template
Quickly assess your students' comprehension after reading a fictional text with this 3-2-1 reflection activity.
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Diagnostic Reading Assessment for Teachers (Phonological Awareness)
Test your students' phonological awareness with this diagnostic reading assessment.
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Verb Tenses Quiz
Assess your students' knowledge of verb tenses with this 5-question quiz.
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Guided Reading Groups - Comprehension Question Prompts
Use these question prompts before, during, and after reading texts in your guided reading sessions.
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Fluency Assessment Tool
A user friendly tool for teachers to test their students' fluency and accuracy.
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Assessment Rubric - Narrative Writing
An assessment rubric designed to help teachers to assess students' narrative writing.
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Genius Hour Project Assessment Rubric (Grades 5 and 6)
An assessment rubric for the teacher to assess each student's Genius Hour project.
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Phonics Assessment - Uppercase and Lowercase Letters
Test your students' knowledge of the uppercase and lowercase letters in the alphabet with this assessment kit.
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4-Digit Place Value - Assessment
Assess your students' knowledge of place value to the thousands place with this open-ended worksheet.
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Learning Scale and Self-Assessment Checklists
Have your students reflect on their work and effort using this self-assessment learning scale.
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Synonyms and Antonyms Quiz
Assess your students’ knowledge of synonyms and antonyms with a vocabulary quiz.
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5th Grade Algebraic Relationships Assessment
Assess student understanding of prime and composite numbers, numerical expressions, graphing numerical patterns, and more with this math assessment.
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5th Grade Place Value Assessment
Assess student understanding of place value, rounding, and comparing decimals with this math assessment.
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5th Grade Decimal Operations Assessment
Assess student understanding of adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing decimals with this math assessment.
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Multi-Digit Whole Numbers and Decimals – Exit Tickets
Assess student understanding of multi-digit whole numbers and decimals with this set of math exit tickets.
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Texas Landmarks Exit Tickets
Supplement your Texas history and geography lessons with a group of Texas Landmark exit tickets.
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Texas Regions Exit Tickets
Supplement your Regions of Texas lessons with a group of exit tickets.
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Maps and Globes-Exit Tickets
Assess student map and globe skills with twenty exit ticket worksheets.
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Types of Landforms - Exit Tickets
Explore the features of various landforms with this set of 20 exit tickets.
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Countries of North America Exit Tickets
Assess student knowledge of the features and countries in North America with quick and easy exit tickets.
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U.S. Mountain and River Exit Tickets
Assess your students’ knowledge of the major rivers and mountains in the United States with a set of exit tickets.
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Government Exit Tickets
Assess student knowledge of governmental concepts with quick and easy exit tickets.
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Mixed Operations Minute Math Booklet (Higher-Level Version)
Incorporate this mental math drills booklet into your math lesson warm-up (or assessment) routine.
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Exit Ticket – Editable Google Slide
Assess your students’ understanding of concepts just covered with this editable exit ticket template.
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Assessment Rubric – Biographical Texts
An assessment rubric designed to help teachers to assess students’ biography writing.
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Oral Presentation Assessment Rubric
A rubric designed to help teachers to assess students' oral presentations.
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Action, Helping, and Linking Verbs Exit Ticket
Quickly assess your students' understanding of action, helping, and linking verbs with this exit ticket template.
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Multiplication Grid – Worksheet
Test your students' multiplication fluency with this half-page multiplication grid.
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Assessment Rubric - Opinion Writing
An assessment rubric designed to help teachers to assess students' opinion writing.
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Assessment Rubric - Poetry
An assessment rubric designed to help teachers to assess student's poetry.
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Assessment Rubric - Procedural Writing
An assessment rubric designed to help teachers to assess students' procedural writing.