5 Formative Assessment Strategies Changing Education In 2025

The most effective teachers don’t wait until the end of a unit to figure out what their students know — they discover it in the middle of the learning process.

However, without intentional strategies to discover that understanding, teachers are often left guessing and moving forward without a clear map of student progress. 

Formative assessment changes that. 

Far more than a series of quick checks or worksheets, it’s a dynamic, ongoing conversation between teachers and students. When approached strategically, it transforms student learning into responsive, insight-rich experiences that drive meaningful student engagement and support the development of a new skill.

It’s crucial to distinguish formative assessments from summative assessments. While the latter evaluates learning after instruction is complete, the former allows for timely correction or clarification.

There is also a need to understand the difference between the types of formative assessments and the strategies that turn those teaching methods into powerful tools for insights. A tool without a strategy is just a task; with the right strategy, it becomes a window into student learning and how they interact with the big idea behind the lesson. 

This article will explore the critical formative assessment strategies that can help you move beyond guesswork and make every instructional decision confidently.

5 Formative Assessment Strategies

For each formative assessment strategy, we will highlight the formative assessment types that align best and provide practical examples to illustrate their use.

Let’s start with a basic strategy.

1. Check for Understanding in Real Time

Checking for students' understanding in real time is about deliberately pausing during instruction to gauge how well students understand the lesson. Rather than waiting for a quiz at the end, as in summative assessment, teachers receive immediate and valuable feedback and make the necessary adjustments before confusion grows. 

Certain formative assessment types, including informal, immediate, verbal, and nonverbal, are especially suited here. They allow for quick, low-pressure check-ins without disrupting the teaching flow. Ungraded formative assessments are also ideal; they help students feel comfortable expressing uncertainty without fearing penalties. This further creates a safe environment to support students’ progress.

A few practical examples for checking understanding in real time include:

• Quick Polls: Quick polls allow for a more structured but fast understanding check. These polls can be more effective when conducted digitally, enabling teachers to instantly review the results. Moreover, teachers can also adapt instructions to align with a specific learning goal or conduct an informal diagnostic assessment.
• Thumbs Up/Down: Students can show thumbs up to indicate understanding and thumbs down to indicate confusion. These quick nonverbal cues provide immediate insights into how many students follow along.  
• Concept Mapping: Teachers can encourage students to visually represent relationships between ideas and concepts. This promotes critical thinking, as students must organize key information. 

To make these formative assessment practices even more seamless, you can use Wooclap.

With Wooclap’s live polling feature, you can instantly gather responses and track student knowledge. The platform also offers interactive brainstorming sessions, making assessing students’ connections between ideas easier without losing valuable insight.

Instead of relying solely on vague or non-verbal cues like facial expressions, Wooclap also offers intentional real-time signals with the “I am confused” button for timely feedback.

2. Elicit Students' Thinking Through Strategic Questioning

Rather than simply asking factual recall questions, strategic questioning encourages students to think critically and express ideas.

Verbal and process-oriented formative assessments fit this strategy perfectly. In the verbal format, students are called upon to articulate their thinking out loud. This can reveal what they know and how they are reasoning through the material. 

The process-oriented format encourages students to share their reasoning and reflect on their thoughts through the process of learning. 

Practical examples to elicit student thinking include:

• Open-Ended Questions: This approach prompts students to think beyond simple “yes” or “no” answers. For instance, instead of asking “Is Paris the capital of France?” a more effective question might be, “Why do you think Paris became the capital of France?”. It could also be a form of exit tickets that teachers can use to track student progress and understanding at the end of every lesson before they leave the classroom.
• Think-Pair-Share: This technique allows students to pair up with a partner to discuss their thoughts before sharing them with a larger group. It promotes collaboration, builds confidence, and allows students to hear diverse perspectives before responding publicly.

Let’s imagine you're teaching a lesson on climate change, and you ask, "How do human activities contribute to climate change?" You could easily see a mix of student responses, ranging from simple ideas to complex reasoning. Some students might need more prompting to articulate their thoughts clearly, while others might come up with surprisingly thoughtful insights. 

How do you capture all of their responses and understand their thinking?

You could use Wooclap’s Open question, which allows students to freely express their understanding in their own words, while you collect a range of unique responses. 

3. Include Ongoing Feedback in Everyday Learning

Regular feedback prevents misconceptions from growing and supports students in taking ownership of their learning. Verbal, immediate, and process-oriented formative assessments best align with this strategy. 

Verbal formative assessments, whether through direct comments or discussions, help students and teachers hear their strengths and areas for improvement. Aligned with that, immediate assessments offer quick responses, such as asking questions in real time, pointing out a strong point, or providing a gentle correction. This ensures that students receive valuable feedback as they work, rather than waiting until after an assignment is graded.

Practical examples of incorporating timely feedback in everyday learning include:

• Peer Assessments: This technique allows students to evaluate each other’s work and provide peer feedback, which can deepen their understanding.
• Quick Polls: A quick poll during or after a lesson instantly gauges student understanding. The feedback can guide the next steps in teaching by revealing valuable information about where learners stand.
• One-Minute Papers and Open-Ended Questions: One-minute papers during a lesson allow you to gauge student understanding on the spot. Similarly, asking an open-ended question aloud and prompting verbal responses helps uncover, or using pair share reveals misconceptions and assess progress toward success criteria. 

If your students collaborate on a research assignment, how do you know whether they’re on the right track, whether they’ve acquired a new skill, or whether they’ve been misunderstanding key points? Wooclap monitors group progress through various real-time question types, such as instant polls, and Word Clouds.

Notably, these tools surface common themes, clarify misconceptions, and offer immediate insight into students’ understanding.

4. Encourage Active Learning with Collaboration

Rather than simply listening to lectures, active learning turns learners into co-creators of their educational experience. Process-oriented assessments are especially effective for this strategy. They focus on how students engage with the material while learning. 

Classroom activities like group discussions, collaborative projects, or real-time progress check-ins allow teachers to provide ongoing feedback during the learning process, not just at the end. This active approach also boosts student engagement and helps them explore the subject matter more deeply.

Practical examples of encouraging active learning through formative assessment techniques include:

• Think-Pair-Share: Think-pair-share promotes active participation, fosters collaboration, and allows students to hear and respond to multiple perspectives, including critiques of other’s work. It is also a great way to build critical thinking.  
• Peer Assessments: Here, you give students a task to solve as a group or pair. They work together to discuss their ideas, test solutions, and refine their understanding. The process leads to meaningful peer feedback. Fortunately, this approach happens without the pressure of a final grade and supports goal setting and reflective learning.

A platform like Wooclap supports collaborative learning through brainstorming sessions.  For more structured teamwork, Team Mode allows students to work in groups and engage in brainstorming activities. This further encourages peer feedback and generates meaningful data teachers can use to guide future instructions.

An important thing to note is that integrating tools like Wooclap into your lesson plan makes these activities engaging, purposeful, and data-driven.

5. Promote Self-Reflection

When students prioritize independent practice, they become more self-aware and proactive learners. Additionally, they can engage in goal setting, monitor their progress, and develop strategies to overcome challenges.

Process-oriented techniques are pretty effective for tracking student performance and development over time. Additionally, nonverbal feedback, such as self-rating scales or reflective journals, allows students to reflect on their learning privately and understand their relationship to the broader subject matter.

For more dynamic, verbal forms of expression, students can also show their level of knowledge verbally or by articulating their thoughts aloud during classroom activities such as higher-order questions, general discussions, or brainstorming sessions.

Practical examples of promoting self-reflection include:

• Reflection Journals: Encouraging students to keep journals where they write about their learning experiences, challenges, and achievements allows them to track their growth over time. For teachers, regularly revisiting these journals offers valuable insight of their thought patterns.  
• Learning Portfolios: A curated collection of a student's work and reflections provides a comprehensive view of student achievement over time while aligning with broader learning goals.
• Rating Scales or Checklists: Self-rating scales or checklists support independent practice by helping learners assess their understanding of specific skills or concepts. Assessment tools like index cards can also be used for quick self-checks or peer feedback moments to gauge comfort levels with new concepts.

Wooclap supports this by offering self-paced questionnaires and feedback forms.

These allow students to answer higher-order questions independently and at their own pace, facilitating regular reflection and self-assessment throughout the learning process. Additionally, Wooclap’s SCT judgement and rating question types provide an excellent way for students to assess their level of knowledge and track their confidence before and after activities.

Turning Formative Assessment Strategies into Everyday Learning

Introducing these strategies into everyday practice allows you to create classrooms where every misconception is caught early, an incorrect answer becomes a springboard for growth, and every student is set up to succeed.

And by choosing the right type, be it verbal, nonverbal, formal, informal, process-oriented, you can match the right assessment tools to the moment, making every interaction meaningful.

Over time, these approaches generate powerful formative assessment data that informs instruction and reduces the pressure of the final grade. 

Of course, managing all of this formative feedback and making sense of it can feel overwhelming. That’s where digital tools like Wooclap come in. Wooclap offers a simple, streamlined way to collect real-time responses, monitor engagement, and adjust instruction based on what students truly need. 

Ready to make your lessons more interactive and impactful? Sign up for the free plan today to create interactive lessons and assessments with one of the most intuitive digital tools available!