10 Formative Assessments for STEM

Are you worried that assessments are disrupting the flow of your STEM lessons? Using formative assessments are a great way to quickly learn if students understand a concept.  Plus, the data you get from these will help inform your future lesson plans!

Formative assessments can be powerful tools! They allow teachers to easily check for student understanding and provide valuable insights into what students know, what they’re struggling with, and where instruction needs to be adjusted.  Formative Assessments can be easily incorporated into STEM lessons and/or units to assess student learning without causing students anxiety too.

These versatile formative assessments can be used throughout a STEM lesson without causing a disruption to your classroom. By soliciting ongoing feedback, we can better guide our teaching and positively impact student learning.  Here’s what’s included:

Here are a few of the formative assessments from the Formative Assessment Bundle Pack that you can incorporate into your STEM lessons to promote deeper learning:

Things I Knew

A sort of pivot on the KWL chart, this formative assessment asks kids to write down one thing that they already knew going into the lesson, one thing they learned during the lesson and on thing that is confusing to them.  This assessment is best used at the beginning of a unit so that the teacher can quickly meet students where they are and add interest to lessons by adding in content that kids are naturally curious about.

ABC Summary

ABC Summary is a simple yet effective strategy to quickly assess student understanding of a topic. It involves students selecting a word or phrase that starts with a letter that the teacher assigns. At the beginning of class, announce the letter of the day. At the end of class, students will pick a key word or concept from the day’s lesson that begins with that letter and write a few sentences about it.  To make it more interesting, the teacher can assign different letters to different tables/teams or even choose different letters for different class periods.

News Headline

News Headline formative assessment is a strategy where students create a headline to summarize a lesson or a specific concept. This simple yet effective assessment requires students to actively engage with the material and demonstrate their understanding in a creative way.  Students must focus on key information to write a compelling headline and use a bit of creativity to write the “article” (2-3 sentences about the topic).

Get these and 14 more in the Formative Assessment bundle pack.  These 17 quick, easy formative assessments can be used for any subject and grade level to make your daily teaching and planning easier!

Get the Formative Assessment Bundle Pack!