Formative Assessment Tools That Inform the Lesson You're Teaching
The point of formative assessment is to change what you do next — yet most tools hand you the data after the lesson has moved on. ClassKite's online assessment tools flip that timing: you run a quick auto-marked check mid-lesson, and because every objective answer is marked the moment a student submits, you get the class picture in time to reteach now rather than next term. This piece is about the practical classroom moves that timing makes possible.
Signals you can act on before the bell
Formative assessment only earns its name if it informs the very lesson you're teaching. ClassKite gives you two live signals to read in the moment:
- Instant per-student marking. Run a practice set live or self-paced; objective questions are checked on submit, so you see who's landed it and who hasn't without collecting a thing.
- Each student's answers. Open any student on the grid to see their attempts one by one, right or wrong — so you reteach the specific misconception, not the whole topic again.
- The Live Student Grid. In progress, done, or flagged-for-help; presence dots; a "struggling" signal; completed counts and scores — a single screen telling you whether to slow down, regroup, or push on.
Practical moves in a single lesson
With those signals on screen, formative assessment becomes a set of small, repeatable decisions:
- Quick check, then branch. Drop in a few multiple choice or true/false items; if the grid lights up "struggling", pause and model one worked example before continuing.
- Target the tricky idea. When several students are flagged as struggling on the same question, address that idea on the board with live annotation instead of re-explaining everything.
- Close the loop first, the grade second. Build checks by hand, by bulk import, or from an AI draft you review. ClassKite is formative assessment of objective questions: free-text essays aren't auto-marked, and the Gradebook only adds up what was marked, so the grade follows the teaching instead of driving it.
It's the same instinct behind a good exit ticket, only earlier — see exit tickets that mark themselves for the end-of-lesson version, and choosing online assessment tools for your classroom if you're weighing options.
Start a free ClassKite account and run your first in-lesson check this week — students join free with a class code.
Frequently asked questions
Can I run instant-feedback practice on the free plan?
Yes. Teacher Basic is free: you can write questions by hand, run live or self-paced practice with instant per-student marking, and have students join free with a class code. The class-wide Live Student Grid, reports, sessions log, score-trend chart and CSV export sit on the paid Teacher Plus and School plans. Compare what is included.
Does ClassKite track standards or curriculum mastery?
No. ClassKite gives auto-marked objective questions plus live signals — true formative assessment — but it isn't a standards-mastery system. There's no rubric and no curriculum-objective tracking; the Gradebook totals scores, it does not judge mastery of a standard.
Which question types can I use for a quick check?
Multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank (word and number), true/false, matching, jumbled-sentence and more, with maths written in LaTeX. They're all objective, so each is marked the instant a student submits.
Related reading: track student progress in live practice, how to reduce marking time, and a closer look at ClassKite reports.