Formative Assessments Teaching Resources
Make formative assessment easy this school year with printable exit tickets, self-assessment cards and more teacher-created resources for your primary classroom.
Each formative assessment printable or digital resource in this collection has undergone a careful review by one of the expert teachers on the Teach Starter team to ensure it's ready for your classroom and your students!
Curious about how to make formative assessments effective in your classroom? Read on for a primer from our teacher team!
What Is a Formative Assessment?
Formative assessment is a method of monitoring your students’ learning in the midst of your lessons. Because the goal is simply to assess if your students understood the lesson — and if you need to make adjustments in your teaching — there's no marking required.
This assessment type stands out from summative assessments, which are typically subject to marking. Summative assessments occur at the end of a learning progression and are solely focused on evaluating content mastery.
Why Are Formative Assessments Important?
When it comes to assessing students, formative assessments are a crucial tool in any teacher's toolbox because they give you a chance to provide feedback or make adjustments to your teaching quickly, and they come in handy for both you and your students.
As a teacher, a formative assessment helps you see where students might be struggling and address the problem immediately. For students, these brief knowledge checks help them identify their own weaknesses and ask for help.
Use our sticky note template to print lines on sticky notes for students to fill out a simple assessment with some details about what they've learned.
How to Make Your Formative Assessments Effective
Want to get the most out of your formative assessments? In addition to the countless assessment tools in this collection, our teacher team has created a list of ideas to help you enhance their effectiveness.
- Keep it simple. You don't have to reinvent the wheel to assess students' basic understanding. Something as simple as just one or two questions on the main point of the lesson can be incredibly effective!
- Add these assessments to your classroom routines. In addition to being simple, these assessments should not take up a lot of class time. Establishing a system and routine for different content will allow you to get the assessment done and move on to the next item on your classroom schedule in a timely manner.
- Don't take it personally. When students hand back an assessment that indicates your lesson did not come across the way you'd hoped, it can feel like a major letdown. It's important to allow yourself to adapt and learn from the experience rather than taking it personally. Remember that even if one lesson worked last year, you have a whole new set of students with their own individual needs!
- Be flexible. Nothing is more frustrating than having to revisit a lesson when you have so much to do and only so much instruction time. Remember this assessment data is simply making you a better teacher, and it's important to be flexible!
As noted before, these assessments should not be graded and should not carry any significant weight since they’re only part of the learning process! This enables students to answer without fear of penalty, making them substantially more effective.
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Year 2 Numeracy Exit Tickets – Worksheets
35 Numeracy Exit Ticket activities for students to provide evidence of their learning progress.
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Subtraction Fact Fluency Assessments
Assess and track subtraction fact fluency with a printable Number Facts Fluency program for subtraction.
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Year 5 Numeracy Exit Tickets
20 Numeracy Exit Ticket activities for students to provide evidence of their learning progress.
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Literacy Teaching Toolkit - Sight Word Assessments
Track Dolch sight word mastery with this set of printable assessments and data sheets to add to your literacy teaching toolkit.
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Subtraction Strategies – Assessment
Assess your students’ knowledge of subtraction strategies with a subtraction assessment.
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Year 4 Numeracy Exit Tickets – Worksheets
24 Numeracy Exit Ticket activities for students to provide evidence of their learning progress.
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Year 1 Numeracy Exit Tickets – Worksheets
18 Numeracy Exit Ticket activities for students to provide evidence of their learning progress.
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5-Digit Place Value - Assessment
An open-ended worksheet to use when assessing your students' knowledge of place value to the tens of thousands.
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Enneagram Personality Test Pack
Build relationships and tailor your teaching to your students’ personalities using an Enneagram Personality Test and supporting resources.
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R.A.C.E.S Writing Strategy Checklists & More
Help your students write quality constructed responses with printable R.A.C.E.S. writing checklists.
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Dolch Sight Word Tracker - Google Sheets
Track mastery of Dolch Sight Words using a digital Google Sheets Sight Word tracking spreadsheet.
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Initial, Medial & Final /s/ - Articulation Worksheets
Build skill with articulating the sounds of beginning, medial, and final /s/ with a set of printable speech articulation worksheets.
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Line Plots / Dot Plots - Year 5 Assessment
Assess student understanding of reading and creating dot plots/line plots with a printable assessment for Year 5.
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Properties of Odd and Even Numbers Exit Tickets
Check for student understanding with these Odd and Even Properties exit tickets for the classroom.
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Addition Strategies Exit Tickets
Assess student knowledge of different addition strategies with these printable exit tickets.
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Year 3 Literacy Exit Tickets – Worksheets
16 Literacy Exit Ticket activities for students to provide evidence of their learning progress.
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Student Self-Assessment Template
Get to know your students a bit better on the first day with a printable student self assessment.
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Subject Verb Agreement Exam
Assess students’ understanding with this two-page subject-verb agreement exam designed to reinforce and evaluate correct verb usage.
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Prepositional Phrase Practice Test
Assess students’ understanding with this two-page prepositional phrase practice test featuring multiple-choice, true-or-false and finish-the-sentence questions.
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Growth Mindset Exit Tickets
Assess your student's understanding of everything growth mindset with this set of exit tickets.
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Main Idea Exit Tickets
Check for understanding of the main idea and supporting detail with these exit tickets.
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Continents and Oceans - Exit Tickets
Determine your students' mastery of Geography concepts with a set of twenty continents and oceans exit tickets.
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Editable Exit Tickets – Template
An editable exit ticket template to ascertain your students’ understanding of concepts you have just covered.
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Year 6 Numeracy Exit Tickets – Worksheets
23 Numeracy Exit Ticket activities for students to provide evidence of their learning progress.
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Year 1 Literacy Exit Tickets – Worksheets
30 Literacy Exit Ticket activities for students to provide evidence of their learning progress.
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Patterns and Algebra Worksheets - Foundation
4 patterns and algebra worksheets linked to the Australian Curriculum.
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Number and Place Value Worksheets - Year 6
6 number and place value worksheets linked to the Australian Curriculum.
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Student Data Trackers Folder
Keep track of student progress with our data binder template pack for lower years.
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3-2-1 Exit Ticket Template
Test your students' knowledge at the end of class with this 3-2-1 exit ticket template.
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Visual Writing Rubric - Foundation Year
Help your foundation year writers perfect their writing with a visual writing rubric.
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Group Presentation Rubric
Make marking for group presentations a breeze with a printable Group Presentation Rubric.
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R.E.A.L. Reader - Self Assessment Rubric
Promote student self-assessment of reading skills with a R.E.A.L. Reading Self-Assessment Rubric.