In my first year teaching 11th-grade argumentative writing, I gave students a quick exit ticket task to complete on their rough drafts: underline your thesis and circle the evidence that supports it. A pattern quickly emerged—many students couldn’t distinguish their claims from the evidence, often offering their claim as the “evidence.” The next day, we used a simple claim vs. evidence T-chart and reviewed an exemplar text by identifying claims and evidence within it. By Friday, their own papers were clearer, and students were successfully distinguishing their claims and evidence. That routine taught me something critical: formative checks don’t just spot errors, they tell you what to teach next.
This is the heart of formative assessment—make thinking visible now so tomorrow’s instruction targets what matters most.
Formative assessment is the ongoing process of gathering evidence of learning throughout instruction and using it to adjust instruction. Unlike summative assessments, which are typically administered at the end of a unit or course to evaluate what students have learned, formative assessments happen during the learning process to inform what comes next. While summative measures provide a broad picture of achievement, formative approaches spotlight and illuminate learning as it unfolds. Teachers can get timely insights into what students currently know and can do, and where misconceptions linger, enabling swift, targeted responses that can enrich teachers’ instruction. For students, formative assessment can serve as a compass that clarifies expectations, highlights strengths, and identifies areas for growth.
Why are formative assessments important?
Formative assessment can support instructional decision-making and make learning more visible. It helps teachers see what students understand right now, not weeks later, and it helps students see the gap between their current understanding and the learning goals, along with specific feedback to close that gap. The importance of formative assessment in education can be organized into five evidence-based principles.
- Define the goals: Students do better when they know what success looks like. Sharing criteria for success and exemplars focuses effort and improves student learning.
- Timely feedback: Information that arrives during learning can still change the outcome. Formative feedback can close gaps before they widen.
- Student ownership: Reflection, self-assessment, and peer feedback build metacognition and agency. Students learn how to learn.
- Instructional agility: Evidence from formative quick checks can guide reteaching, enrichment, pacing, grouping, and practice, all in the flow of a lesson.
- Equity: Frequent no- or low-stakes checks reduce reliance on single, more high-stakes assessment events and surface needs earlier, which supports more students, more often.
Next, we discuss the advantages and disadvantages of formative assessment, outline key practices, and point to different types of formative assessment you can use right away.
Formative assessment advantages and disadvantages
Advantages of formative assessment
Below is a list of key advantages of formative assessment in everyday classroom practice:
- Better decisions, faster: Frequent signals (short responses, work samples, and notes from classroom discussion) give teachers actionable information to adjust instruction the same day.
- Stronger learning gains: Small, just-in-time corrections add up, and students can practice the right things at the right time.
- Motivation and confidence: No- or low-stakes cycles emphasize progress and next steps, reducing anxiety tied to “one-shot” evaluations.
- Differentiation built in: Evidence from checks naturally informs grouping, scaffolds, extension activities, and pacing.
- Feedback culture: Regular opportunities to give/receive feedback normalize revision and improvement.
- Professional collaboration: Common routines (e.g., exit tickets across a subject or grade level) enable teachers to compare patterns and co-plan responses—true common formative assessments in action.
Disadvantages of formative assessment
As with any educational strategy, there are tradeoffs involved in implementing formative assessment. While the benefits are well-documented and research-based, certain challenges can emerge depending on context, training, and consistency of practice. Recognizing these tensions can help teachers plan ahead and make formative assessment work effectively in their classrooms:
Time and workload
- Potential disadvantage: Gathering, scanning, and responding to evidence takes planning.
- How to address it: Start small (one routine you can act on regularly) and scale intentionally. Digital tools can also help streamline this process; for example, Classcraft Quick Checks provide immediate, real-time evidence that teachers can review and act on without adding to their load.
Vague tasks yield vague data
- Potential disadvantage: If a task isn’t directly tied to a goal, the responses you collect might not reveal what students actually understand or what to teach next.
- How to address it: Tie every formative check to a clear goal and expected evidence.
Lack of student buy-in
- Potential disadvantage: Unfocused tasks lead to responses that are hard to interpret, and you may end up with interesting work that doesn’t point to a clear next step.
- How to address it: Make the goal explicit, tell students what kind of evidence you’re looking for, and design prompts that directly surface that thinking.
Unclear grade boundaries
- Potential disadvantage: If students think every formative check affects their grade, they may focus on points instead of progress.
- How to address it: Keep most formative tasks ungraded or low-stakes, and communicate clearly what will and will not be recorded.
Bad record-keeping
- Potential disadvantage: Insights can vanish by tomorrow.
- How to address it: Use simple systems (checklists, inventories, and notes to yourself) to track your insights and trends.
Merits of formative assessment
The merits of formative assessment extend beyond a single lesson. Applied consistently, these assessments compound into broader payoffs at the unit and course level. When formative assessment is planned and implemented in ways that align tightly to learning goals, its timing and purpose are clear to everyone, making students’ learning trajectories easier to follow. Because these assessments are small and repeatable, they are also sustainable. Teachers can make steady improvements and changes without overhauling the curriculum. These broader benefits show up not only in day-to-day instruction, but also in how students learn and how schools organize their work.
The benefits for students are clear: well-designed formative routines help students develop academic self-monitoring—the ability to set goals, track their progress, interpret feedback, and choose strategies that move their learning forward. These metacognitive habits strengthen understanding in the moment and transfer across subjects, supporting students long after instruction ends.
Formative assessment also supports schools when it becomes a shared practice. When teams use common routines and consistent language for evidence and feedback, it becomes easier to compare patterns, coordinate instruction as a team, and plan responsive supports. Over time, these practices contribute to a stronger data-driven culture—one where instructional decisions are grounded in real-time evidence rather than assumptions.
A quick guide to different types of formative assessment
The following table highlights different types of formative assessment, their purposes, and practical uses.
Routine | What it reveals | Ideas for use | When to use | Implementation tip |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Exit ticket | Individual understanding of a single target | One prompt tied to success criteria; skim for patterns | Daily lesson close; plan tomorrow | Sort into three piles: Got it / Almost / Reteach |
| Quick checks | Whole-class and item-level trends | Three to five items mid-lesson; view instant results | Pacing decisions; flexible grouping | Focus on patterns, not grades |
| Whiteboard hold-ups | Real-time correctness and strategy use | Pose one problem; all students show boards on count | Detect misconceptions fast | Ask two students to explain different approaches. |
| Think-Pair-Share discussions | Reasoning, vocabulary, and misconceptions | Pose a targeted question; circulate and listen | To surface reasoning; strengthen discourse; check conceptual understanding | Give a sentence frame for evidence-based talk. |
| One-minute essay / exit reflection | Metacognition; ability to justify, synthesize, and connect ideas | Prompt: “What clicked? What still confuses you and why?” | Surface lingering questions; consolidate learning; adjust tomorrow’s instruction. | Skim for themes; address top two next class. |
| Peer feedback with rubric | How well students apply criteria; provide quality feedback | Have each peer leave two comments: one strength, one suggestion. Then ask one clarifying question. | Writing, labs, and projects | Model rubric use and strong feedback first. |
| Self-assessment rubric | Student-perceived progress; next steps | Students rate themselves on two to four criteria; jot a goal | Goal-setting; conferencing | Have students propose their next practice task. |
| Walking conference | Individual sticking points and next-step needs | 30–60 seconds per student while they work | Workshop time; independent practice; revision days in writing lessons | Ask one probing question, leave one action. |
| Concept map or sketched-note | How students connect ideas, organize information, and see relationships among concepts | Create a quick map of the day’s big ideas and draw arrows or symbols showing how concepts relate (cause/effect, example, sequence). | Synthesis work; end of lesson; unit connectors | Create a class version and ask students to justify each connection before adding it. |
Final thoughts
The benefits of formative assessment come when we embed it in small, consistent routines—predictable moments in a lesson when teachers gather evidence and use it to inform what comes next. When these checks happen regularly and remain low-stakes, they widen the path into the conversation for every learner.
Choose one routine you can commit to, define what instructional decision it will inform, and plan how you’ll respond to the results. Over time, you’ll build a repertoire of formative assessment practices that strengthen instruction, accelerate student growth, and sustain a culture of continuous improvement—exactly what teachers and school leaders aim to cultivate.
I saw this play out in my own classroom with one of my 11th graders. Later that same week, a student who had mistaken her claim for evidence on Monday caught herself during revisions later in the week. She glanced over to our claim-evidence T-chart on the wall, and said, “Oh—this is my evidence, it supports my claim by . . . .” It was a small shift, but it showed me how a single formative check paired with a small adjustment in instruction can further understanding and bring a big result.
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