Google Forms for Formative Assessment Part 1: The Paper, Pencil Conundrum

How often do you find yourself at the end of the night turning on an old Netflix show for background noise and begin shuffling through the day’s worth of papers? For me it was too often. Teaching Math and Math RTI/MTSS (whichever acronym you and/or your district prefer) to two separate 5th grade classes honestly had me drowning in grading. And when I say drowning, I mean a complete and total man (or woman) overboard with no life jacket, preserver, or boat in site ladies and gentleman. I found myself wondering how everyone else did it. How did those teachers that showed up at contract time, and not lug home a milk crate full of papers every single night make that happen?

I was frustrated with so many components of the paper, pencil conundrum that I began to fixate on all of the problems in order to find a solution.

• I was spending all of my evenings grading, almost every night of the week including weekends.
  

• When I didn’t have enough time/wasn’t able to grade all of the papers in a particular evening, I was disappointed in myself for not getting feedback to my students fast enough. (This was also particularly upsetting when I didn’t get to a student’s paper who missed the boat on the concept we were working on, and I wasn’t able to correct any misconceptions prior to starting to build on that concept.)
  

• The amount of instant feedback that I was able to provide students with was minimal. If I was working with a small group or helping an individual student it was difficult (if not near impossible) to even scan assignments for misconceptions as they were turned in.
  

• Students weren’t able to self-monitor and self-correct mistakes individually or in partners effectively, due to the lag time in feedback.
  

• Students weren’t able to easily and effectively self-differentiate the types of tools they needed to be successful, as they were all using the same assignment sheet, and I didn’t have enough time to differentiate every assignment in multiple ways.
  

• I wasn’t able to make effective pairings for student work partners, based on data from assignments.
  

• I wasn’t able to plan interventions for the students who needed help with a particular concept, because I was spending practically all of my time, you guessed it, grading!

So the qualifications for what I wanted in a system started to become clear. I needed to create a system that would cut down my grading time, increase my intervention planning time, minimize the delay in feedback for students and myself, allow for students to self-monitor and self-correct mistakes, allow students to self-differentiate based on the supports they needed to be successful, and allow for the creation of effective partner pairs based on data. To me, at first, this list seemed like Mission Impossible, but dream big or go home right?

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Enter Google Forms

Let’s talk formative assessment for a minute shall we? Formative assessment should be an ongoing process throughout the learning process in which the teacher and students are able to measure/check for understanding, reflect on instruction and learning, and develop the necessary strategies and interventions to result in students self-assessing their own learning as they reach master of the content. Learning a new concept could be paralleled with climbing a mountain, and formative assessment is the "road map" that will allow students to successfully reach the summit. The problem with the traditional paper and pencil version of assignments is that often the "road map" is unreliable or difficult to read due to the delay in the feedback loop for teachers and students. For me, taking papers home overnight was even too great of a delay in the feedback loop. I wanted my students to have instant feedback, but there was no way that grading papers in class was possible or an effective use of my time. Knowing that there had to be a solution to my paper, pencil conundrum I turned to technology to see what I could discover.

I had heard of Google Forms, but to be honest, I had only really used it from the participant side for filling out quick staff surveys or behavior logs. From what I had seen, it was an acceptable tool for these purposes, but the question was if it could be applicable in a classroom setting for assignments. Now, before you make the assumption that I completely tossed handwritten, paper/pencil work for multiple choice Google Forms, please know that I could not ever do away with handwritten work for math. Writing and working through problems in a physical format (whether on a whiteboard or a piece of paper) is an essential part of how my students work to problem solve in our classroom every day. I decided that for the system to work, I would pair differentiated worksheets (see Part 3 of this series for more on these!) with digital math assignments, and see what would happen.

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The First Two Weeks

Practice makes progress is a saying I like to use with my students. It is a good reminder for all of us that learning new procedures and tools can take time! In fact, most often I find that when trying something new in the classroom there are always a few bugs to work out; particularly if it involves new classroom technology. Keeping practice makes progress in the forefront of our work, for the first two weeks the class practiced accessing and turning in the assignment Form on Google Classroom, with step-by-step visual and auditory directions. While we definitely had a lot of growing pains the first week, by the second week students were starting to get in the new routine!

Here’s what I found very interesting after using a mix of question types and responses on the digital math assignments: more often than not, student errors on the Form weren’t due to errors in the math (we would always check with their paper assignment sheet), but more often due to something like “I clicked on the wrong answer on accident”, “I didn’t realize that I had to read the label.”, and/or “I mixed up the numbers when I typed them in.” What a shocking, and may I say frightening realization! When entering answers online it seemed that a majority of students weren’t taking their time while entering their answers, and definitely weren’t double checking to make sure that what they had on their paper matched the answer on the Google Form. I am not sure about your state/district requirements for testing, but all of the major assessments that my students take throughout the year are in an online format. I began to wonder just how many missed answers on standardized online tests were merely due to not being familiar with an online format! As a class we discussed ways to make sure we were entering answers carefully, and double checking to make sure the answers on the form matched our paper/pencil work. Slowly, but surely, the amount of mistakes due to entering answers online began to fade, and before every standardized assessment we reviewed our list of class strategies for entering answers carefully when working in an online format.

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A Year of Digital Math Assignments

Last year, after getting through the first two weeks of trial and error in September, I made the commitment to create Digital Math Assessments for the remainder of the year. The benefits that I found as I tweaked and modified my new system were truly astounding.

• Minimizing Lesson Prep - Last year, my time spent on copying was greatly reduced by using Digital Math Assignments. Rather than copying individual assignments, I bulk copied several differentiated assignment sheets that students were able to choose from (Check out Part 3 of this series for more on differentiating with Google Forms). This year, (as my Forms are already built), all I have to do is link the assignment in Google Classroom and in sheer minutes my materials are ready to go.
  

• A Shortened Feedback Loop - With Google Forms, my students are immediately able to see their results upon submitting their assignment. This gives students the opportunity to self-monitor and self-correct their own learning, as students are able to go back and edit their work. (For all of the settings I use in Google Forms check out Part 2 of this series!) Then students are able to alert me of any questions they have, and I am able to instantly see who needs intervention.
  

• More Time for Intervention Planning - As a part of my differentiated assignment sheets, students record their first score and if needed their second score on every assignment. It is quick for me to sort through the results and find the students who will need intervention before moving on to the next concept. I spend most of my time at home now grouping student intervention groups for the next day and planning for ways to help them with the content.
  

• Intentional Partner Pairs - With the data that I was getting from the Google Forms, I was able to spend time intentionally creating pairings of students to work together each day. Students spent time working on responsible math talk and discussing how each got their answers, and were able to problem solve together if an error was made.
  

• Gaining Confidence in Online Formats - When we approached our standardized test sessions, students had a greater confidence and strategies that would support them while doing work online. From double checking answers before submission, to talking about how to make a blank piece of paper work best for your work, I saw huge growth in the confidence students had in approaching tests throughout the year.
  

• More Prepared to Transition Online - By the time schools closed in March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, my students were more prepared to transition online than most. Having worked on Google Forms throughout the majority of the year, we had a semi-smooth transition to moving online. (I’m going to put a disclaimer here. I don’t think anyone’s transition was truly “smooth” last spring, including mine, but I was extraordinarily thankful that my students had the experience with Google Forms and other programs to help learning and contact continue.)

Starting to create/use Google Forms in your classroom can seem like a daunting task. Trust me, I’ve been there! It seems that too often in education that we are trying different strategies to make a difference often to varying degrees of success. I promise that Google Forms have changed the way I teach. And I can tell you that with the results I’ve seen, I am never going back. So if you are struggling with the paper/pencil conundrum that I was, and if, For the Love of Learning, you are willing to try something new, consider Google Forms.

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Coming Soon!

Want to try Google Forms, but not sure where to start? I got you. Check out Part 2 and Part 3 (upcoming) on this series to learn about all of my suggested settings and the nitty gritty of how to get started implementing Google Forms in your classroom this year.