Formative assessment is a powerful tool for teachers to use in the classroom. When teachers take short informal assessments scattered throughout the class period, the teacher can quickly see if there is a need for reteach. Integrating formative assessments during class time can be challenging because there is only one teacher and many students.
To increase efficiency and to be able to conduct more formative assessments, Mary Cherry is using an app on the iPad call Socrative. As students are working independently on their math problems, they enter the answers on the iPad and cand do this at their own pace. These answers immediately show up on Ms. Cherry’s iPad. She can then quickly see which individual students are having problems or if most of the class is having a problem, she then stops and does a reteach of the concept. The sooner you correct misconceptions the better for the student.