Formative assessments are so important in social studies! If you teach in a state with a standardized test, then you know formative assessments are the KEY to success! In my US History classroom, I am constantly evaluating what works best in terms of the age-old question, “Did they get it?” Formative assessments are critical and the more I embed fun ways to do it, the more I know my students will be successful.
My favorite ways to check for understanding vary on the time of the year and how long I have in class any particular day.
As we get closer to our test in May each year, I build in more and more quick activities to formally assess students. These activities give me the informal data I need to drive my review moving forward.
These are my Top 10 favorite formative assessments:
- Hands-on sorting activities. Honestly, my students LOVE it when I break out with the baggies. They know we are about to do something hands-on. I love watching students make connections as they sort primary sources, vocabulary and key people in US History. They are discussing, reviewing and are engaged in the content. I can immediately tell when students are struggling and need a mini review!
I always add baggies (all sizes) and card stock to my "wish list" at the beginning of the school year.
2. Play Give a Clue! This game is a favorite of my students. Students pair up with one partner facing my screen. The other student has their back to the screen. The one facing the screen gives clues to their partner to try and have them guess the terms.
Why do I love it so much?
Students review a ton of information in a short amount of time. If I listen carefully, I can tell what terms students are struggling with. We will do a quick review before we move on. Check out the version for early American History and Modern American History.
3. Graffiti Tagging – This is one of those “have in your back pocket” strategies that works every time! Pass out the dry erase markers and call out an era. Students do a brain dump of anything they can remember about the era on their desk.
I’ll have students call out a term they have written down, if a student has that term, they circle it on their desk. We go around the room until we have exhausted the terms. I “fill in” with any terms/people/etc. they may have missed.
If time permits, they write a summary of the era using as many of the terms as they can.
4. Play a quick game of Bingo. I prepare “snack sized” baggies of squares of paper at the beginning of the school year that I can pull out quickly. If you print and laminate your Bingo cards, you can use them year after year!
https://amzn.to/4cGzqVZ5. White board races – This one is super simple! I divide my students into 3 groups and hand the 1st student in each group a dry erase marker. Students answer questions on the white board as fast as they can. Then they pass the marker to the next person on their team. The team with the most wins gets Jolly Ranchers.
I get the HUGE bag of Jolly Ranchers in bulk off Amazon.
6. Door Slaps! – Check out this fun formative assessment from Dawn from Social Studies Success.
7. Play the “good the bad and the ugly” of an era. This is an easy activity! I call out a topic or an era. In small groups, students discuss the era. They come up with the “good, the bad and the ugly” of the era. We vote as a class on the best answers.
8. Q & A with individual white boards – I have a class set of white boards I got off Amazon. I hand each student a white board and a dry erase marker. I always give students 1 or 2 minutes to “draw whatever makes them happy” – so they can get the doodles out of their system. Then I simply ask questions and have them answer on the white board.
9. Pictionary with whiteboards – I’ve done this as a whole class activity and with individual white boards. I write key concepts on notecards. I pass out the note cards (and ask them not to show others) and have students draw an image of the concept for other students to guess.
10. Blooket, Quizlet Live and Quizlet Live are always in my back pocket. Students love to play and the data you get at the end is great! Perfect to drive your next steps of instruction!
Formative assessments don’t have to be quick writes, exit tickets or boring! Think outside the box and get students discussing, moving and interactive!
What are your favorite formative assessments?
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