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What is formative asessment?
Formative assessment is the process of gathering evidence about student understanding during learning and using it to inform teaching.
This idea is central to the influential work of Black and Wiliam, who argued that assessment should not simply be used to measure learning, but to actively support it. The key idea is that learning is made visible.
In this article, I’ll explore what formative assessment is, how it differs from summative assessment, and some practical strategies teachers can use to gather meaningful information about student understanding.
Formative vs summative assessment
Summative assessment evaluates learning after instruction has taken place. Examples include end-of-topic tests, mock assessments, and GCSE exams. Its purpose is to measure performance and attainment.
Formative assessment, however, takes place during the learning process itself. Its purpose is not simply to judge performance but to inform teaching while there is still time to improve understanding during the lesson. It allows teachers to identify and address misconceptions before they become embedded.
Both forms of assessment are important. Summative assessment helps us measure progress over time, while formative assessment helps shape what happens while students are still learning.
One assesses learning. The other supports it.
Why traditional checking for understanding can be misleading
Formative assessment is not a single strategy. Questioning, discussions, quizzes, and observations can all be used formatively if they help teachers gather information about student understanding and adapt their teaching accordingly.
The challenge is that some approaches provide a more reliable picture of whole-class understanding than others.
Early in my career, I relied heavily on hands-up questioning. I would run the familiar cycle of teaching the content, asking a question, and interpreting confident responses as evidence that the class had understood.
The problem, of course, is that volunteer responses rarely represent the thinking of the whole class. I was being fooled into thinking that busy, confident students understood the content being taught.
This creates what I now think of as the “illusion of understanding”.
Students may:
- recognise keywords
- repeat modelled explanations
- copy sentence structures
- remember surface-level information
- simply follow examples shown moments earlier
All of these can give the impression of secure understanding without guaranteeing that learning will transfer or last over time.
This is why formative assessment strategies that involve all students are so valuable. Rather than relying on a handful of volunteers, they provide a much clearer picture of what the whole class actually understands.
Effective formative assessment strategies
Not all formative assessment strategies provide the same quality of information.
Over time, I found that certain approaches gave me a much clearer picture of what students understood during lessons. Rather than hearing from a handful of students, I could see patterns of understanding across the whole classroom.
Mini whiteboards
Mini whiteboards allow every student to respond simultaneously, making misconceptions visible immediately.
For example, during a GCSE Geography lesson on the causes of climate change, I asked students to identify the three natural causes of climate change. The vast majority were able to identify them correctly.
However, the real value came when I pushed their thinking further and asked them to explain how these factors contribute to climate change. This is where misconceptions started to surface.
Without whole-class participation, I would probably never have spotted that some of the deeper understanding was still shaky.
Hinge questions
Hinge questions are carefully designed multiple-choice questions used to check understanding at a critical point in a lesson. What makes them powerful is not simply whether students answer correctly, but what the incorrect answers reveal.
The distractors in a multiple-choice question should represent common misconceptions rather than obviously wrong options. For example, during a lesson on uneven development, I asked students which factor best explained why some countries have lower levels of development. Responses were split between colonial history and natural resources.
That split immediately revealed competing ideas within the classroom and highlighted the need for further clarification before moving forward.
Cold calling
Cold calling has also significantly improved the quality of classroom discussion.
When used effectively, it encourages all students to remain cognitively engaged rather than relying on volunteers. More importantly, it allows teachers to probe students’ reasoning rather than simply accepting correct answers at face value.
The climate change example above works well here. While many students could identify natural causes such as volcanic eruptions, cold calling allowed me to explore whether they could actually explain the processes involved and the impact these events have on the climate.
Often, the most valuable formative assessment information comes not from whether an answer is correct, but from how students explain their thinking.
Exit tickets
Exit tickets provide a quick snapshot of understanding at the end of a lesson.
I often use them to identify:
- persistent misconceptions
- vocabulary confusion
- gaps in explanation
- uncertainty about key concepts
They are particularly useful because they can immediately inform planning for the next lesson.
Formative assessment examples from the classroom
One of the clearest examples of formative assessment improving my teaching came during a coastal management lesson.
Earlier in the lesson, students had correctly identified a range of hard engineering strategies, so I initially assumed their understanding was secure. However, when I asked them to explain why some communities oppose sea walls, most responses focused solely on cost and overlooked the environmental and social impacts.
Without formative assessment, I would probably have moved on, believing students understood the concept fully. Instead, the responses revealed that their understanding was only partial.
Similarly, in a Year 10 lesson on uneven development, students were split between colonial history and natural resources as explanations for why some countries remain underdeveloped.
Rather than revealing the answer immediately, I asked students to justify why someone might choose each option.
This made the underlying reasoning visible across the room and helped students recognise that complex geographical issues rarely have single-cause explanations.
For me, this is where formative assessment is most powerful. It allows teachers to see student thinking more clearly than traditional questioning ever could.
Common pitfalls with formative assessment
Although formative assessment can be incredibly powerful, there are also common mistakes teachers can make.
1. Mistaking confidence for understanding
Students who answer fluently or appear confident do not necessarily understand concepts securely.
2. Asking questions without genuinely listening to the responses
Sometimes teachers ask questions simply to maintain pace or participation, rather than to gather meaningful information.
3. Moving on too quickly when most students are correct
Correct answers do not always mean secure understanding. When most students answer correctly, there is an opportunity to probe their reasoning and drive deeper thinking and understanding
4. Collecting evidence but not acting on it
Finally, formative assessment can become ineffective when evidence is collected but not used. Gathering information only matters if it informs future teaching decisions.
Formative assessment has changed the way I think about teaching. It has helped me move beyond relying on confident volunteers and visible performance as indicators of learning. Instead, it has allowed me to see student thinking more clearly across the whole classroom.
Strategies such as hinge questions, mini whiteboards, cold calling, and exit tickets are valuable not simply because they increase participation, but because they provide teachers with better evidence about what students actually understand.
In many ways, that is the real purpose of formative assessment: making learning visible before misconceptions become embedded.
However, seeing the problem is only part of the challenge. The next step is to decide how instruction should change in response to what the evidence reveals.
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