Overview of Formative Assessment

Audience: Teachers

Formative Assessments are quick, informal assessments that teachers carry out daily to swiftly check students' understanding as the class moves through a unit.

Teachers can combine the time-saving benefits of auto-marking with the power of multimodal tools to gain deeper insights into student learning, enabling targeted support and informed teaching.

ℹ️ Creating formative assessments is available for customers with Seesaw subscriptions. Seesaw Starter teachers can use activities that have formative assessments, but cannot modify them.

How do I use Formative Assessment?

Overview

With Formative Assessment, there’s no need for quick understanding checks or to use another quiz app. You can do everything in Seesaw! Formative Assessment offers low-pressure practice for standardised tests in a mini-quiz format.

K-6 Teachers: Get instant insights into who understands and who needs more support.
K-2 Teachers: Drag and drop format designed for young learners. Create questions with shapes, images, emojis, and more! Start the year with ready-to-use pre-assessments created by our Curriculum team.
3-6 Teachers: Formative Assessment offers two flexible formats for quizzes and polls. Students learn the test-taking format, while also explaining their thinking in multiple ways.

How do I create questions?

Overview
Questions can be added to new or existing activities. Teachers can choose from several question types: multiple choice, true/false, poll, drag and drop sort. Teachers then write a question with a list of possible response options and indicate which responses are correct. All of Seesaw’s multimodal tools can be used alongside questions, allowing teachers to scaffold assignments, especially for younger learners or EAL pupils. Teachers can also search for relevant questions on a wide range of educational topics using our AI-powered Find Questions tool, making it quicker to create formative assessment activities.

More Details💡See our Help Centre article for step-by-step instructions on creating Formative Assessment questions!

Practice mode

In practice mode, students can check their work and receive hints in real time, helping them confirm they are on the right track and providing guidance while working independently.

Assessment mode

In assessment mode, students do not receive immediate feedback. Instead, students and family members can review results once the student’s work has been approved by the teacher.

Reporting

Overview
Teachers have access to live student response data, enabling responsive teaching and differentiation. Teachers can show results reports to students and families after approving their work. Additionally, teachers can easily share Progress Reports via Messages with families or other support staff.

More Details
💡Check out our Help Centre article for step-by-step instructions on Reporting!

Ready to Use Formative Assessment Activities in the Seesaw Library

The Seesaw Library contains Activities with ready-to-use Formative Assessments. To find these Activities, look for Practice or Assessment tags next to the Activity information.

What is the student experience?

Overview
Students can use all of Seesaw's creative multimodal tools alongside formative assessment questions to explain their thinking. Questions develop with students to support their changing developmental needs, from an intuitive drag-and-drop format for younger learners to a multiple choice format for older primary pupils.

More Details
💡Take a closer look at the student experience with Formative Assessment!

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