Socrative

Socrative is a free web-based student response system app to be used on a phone or tablet.  It can also be used through the website if your students have computers.  Socrative is a great resource for formative assessments!  Teachers can download student's data, save it to their Google Drive, have it e-mailed to them, or view the data in a chart.  Teachers have four options when using Socrative.

The first option is to "Start a Quiz".  Here a teacher can import a quiz that has already been made, or they can type in their own.  Questions can be in multiple choice, true/false, or short answer format.  Once the quiz has been started, the teacher can choose whether they want the quiz to be teacher-paced or student-paced.  Teachers see student's answers in real-time.

The next option is for the teacher to ask a "Quick Question".  The teacher orally asks a multiple choice, true/false, or short answer question and the students submit an answer.  Again, teachers see student's responses in real-time, and they immediately know if the student needs more help.

Teachers can also conduct a "Space Race".  This allows the teacher to split the class into teams and have them compete against each other.  The teams collaborate to choose answers, and a graph is updated to show how many questions each team has gotten correctly.  

The "Exit Ticket" component is the last option of the website or app.  This is where the students must grade themselves from A to D on how well they think they understood the material, summarize what the lesson was about, and then answer a question that the teacher has asked.

I have personally used the "Quick Question" and "Exit Ticket" components in my classroom.  The students enjoyed using Socrative, and I had immediate data on which of my students understood the material that was presented that day.  Formative assessments are very important in a classroom, and Socrative is an easy way to collect that data that the students enjoy.  I used the quick question method to review for a test.  I knew immediately if I needed to spend a few minutes explaining the concept again according to the student's answers.  I also loved the fact that only I had access to the student's answers.  Privacy is very important to some students, and they are more likely to answer freely and truly learn from their mistakes if they feel protected from their peers knowing they were wrong.  I really liked how the exit ticket allowed the students to grade themselves and summarize.  Students get tired of using the same strategies over and over.  Socrative is an easy way to change things up and keep students engaged.  It has a variety of ways that it can be used in the classroom, and I think it makes learning fun.  It can be used at any grade level for any subject.