Fun with Formative Assessment in Grade 4

I should preface my list with that I believe that play and games are an essential part of our school day and I aim to have at least one learning game as part of each day and to make things as playful as possible to engage my students. We play a lot of games some adapted from traditional board games, others are theater sports with a twist through these I can see my students thinking and understanding. It’s hard to play guess who if you can’t ask good questions or make inferences, and human guess who or guess who with characters in a novel works well with my students. Many of my ideas on the list below are things we do in my classroom but I didn’t realize I could be using as assessment, I was practicing skills or working on competencies. 

1. Chalk / pencil talks
2. My favourite no https://learn.teachingchannel.com/video/class-warm-up-routine
3. Exit tickets
4. White board work
5. Journals / reflections
6. End of week Count downs
   1. 5 things that went well this week
   2. 4 things I learned
   3. 3 words to describe my week
   4. 2 questions I still have
   5. 1 goal for next week
7. Plickers
8. Observations
9. Interviews / conferences
10. Rock, stick, leaf
    1. One thing that rocked
    2. One thing that stuck with you
    3. One question you are leaving with
11. Temperature check
12. Traffic lights
    1. Red, yellow and green paint chips on corners of desks
13. Graphic organizers
14. Class discussions
15. Sketches
16. Vote with your feet
17. Smart board games
18. The flash card game
19. TAG conferences
    1. Tell something you like about the work
    2. Ask a question
    3. Give one suggestion
20. 4 corners
21. 4 square
    1. one word, math problem or question in each of 4 squares for students to make a connection to, respond to or solve the problem.
22. Snowball activities
    1. Write an idea on a piece of paper crumple it up and throw it across the room. Next student picks it up and adds an idea before repeating.
23. Hot seat game
24. Expert game