Formative assessment means more than just giving a quiz or an exit ticket. An assessment is only formative if the teacher (or her students) respond to the information gathered.

However coming up with an appropriate response is typically hard to do. After all, the most common finding in formative assessment is that a significant, but perhaps minority, group of students still do not understand a concept, after the teacher gave her best shot at helping students understand. No teachers save their best strategy for teaching a topic until later.

I’m working on a menu of possible responses teachers could come up with. Some of these responses depend on the nature of the formative assessment gathered, but most of them can be applied in many different contexts.

If you have other possible strategies teachers can try, please feel free to add them here or comment below.