Formative and summative uses

Formative checks happen during learning and shape the next lesson. Short multiple-choice quizzes in Google Forms or Microsoft Forms, exit tickets and live response tools such as Kahoot! suit this well, because results arrive instantly and can be sorted by question.

Summative assessment judges learning at the end of a unit. Here, digital tools help mostly with organisation: shared rubrics, moderation between teachers and secure storage of marks.

Rubrics are useful in both cases. A clear rubric attached to an assignment in the learning platform shows students what good work looks like before they start, and lets teachers mark more consistently. Many platforms allow comments to be saved and reused, which speeds up feedback on common errors without making it generic.

Writing better questions

An automatically marked quiz is only as useful as its questions. Wrong answer options should reflect real misconceptions, so a pupil's choice tells you something. Mixing recall questions with ones that ask students to apply or explain, as Bloom's taxonomy suggests, gives a fuller picture.

• Write each wrong option around a common error you have seen.

• Keep one idea per question.

• Add one short written-response item for reasoning.

• Check the results by question, not only by total score.

A ten-minute exit check

For a class aged 9 to 11 after a lesson on equivalent fractions, set a five-question form on tablets or laptops, with one question asking pupils to explain their answer in a sentence. Allow six minutes to answer. In the remaining four, look at the question-by-question summary and pick the most-missed item. Open the next lesson with that item, worked through on the board, and regroup pupils based on their answers.

Keep the form and reuse it next year, adjusting any question that nearly everyone answered correctly.

Fairness and data

Check that tools work with screen readers and on the devices students actually have at home. Schools should know where assessment data is stored and who can see it. Parents appreciate short comments explaining what a score means and what comes next, rather than a number alone.

Leaders can help by agreeing how often quick digital checks are used, so students are not quizzed in every lesson, and by giving teams time to look at results together. Comparing the same short quiz across several classes often reveals a shared misconception that is worth addressing in planning, rather than a problem with one teacher or group.

Key points

• Use quick digital checks to plan the next lesson.

• Design wrong answers around real misconceptions.

• Read results question by question.

• Pair scores with a short comment for families.

Photos: Annie Spratt, Hasnain Ayaz / Unsplash