Full disclosure: Socrative did not pay me anything to write this article, in fact they did not even ask me to write this article! I just happen to love their app.
Socrative is an app that works on just about any device and it’s a great easy, quick, way to assess and review with students. I only use it for formative assessment, because I use Canvas (our school’s learning management system) for summative assessment, but it could be used for summative assessment as well. I previously blogged about Socrative here, here, here, here, and here. In this post, I will recap some of the methods I previously blogged about and add some more.
Stations Review
Before I give a quiz, I often do review in stations. This originated out of necessity, because before we were 1:1, I had a class set of iPads, but I did not have enough for every student to use. I ended up keeping the model after we went 1:1, because I like getting students out of their seats and usually one of the stations does not require a device. Usually one of the stations involves the use of Socrative, in the form of a multiple choice quiz. I don’t grade the quiz, but I can see how the students did when their results come in (I let them answer anonymously). 
You can allow short answers or multiple choice, but I have tend to prefert multiple choice, because I like how you can provide immediate feedback for it. With short answer, you can enter in a correct answer, but if the student spells it wrong or leaves out an accent, it is marked wrong. Once the student answers a question, a dialog box pops up telling the student if their answer was correct or not, followed by an explanation. At the end of class, if time allots, I go over some of the questions that were missed the most. Socrative also allows you to see a breakdown of how many students chose each response. I reset the results after each class so the breakdown only reflects the current class. I previously blogged about using Socrative as a review station here and here.
Interpretive Reading Practice
I recently started giving IPAs (Integrated Performance Assessments), and each IPA has an interpretive task, which is usually reading centered around an authentic document. While I give the actual assessment on Canvas, I make up a mock activity with a similar type of document to practice on. I prefer to use this over Canvas for the practice because it easily lets me see a breakdown on how students performed on each question. Below is a sample reading question (the students can click on the document to make it bigger).
Sub ActivitySocrative is the perfect activity for a sub if you’re 1:1. The sub doesn’t even need to have access to a computer, as long as they write the room code on the board. This is helpful also when the sub doesn’t speak the language – the feedback that you can provide to students after each question helps compensate for that. I can also check from home and see how they are doing and go over answers the next day if I choose. Worksheet Alternative
I’ve converted several worksheets to Socrative activities. It makes it more interactive for the students and easier to go over at the end. Usually if I’m having students do an activity like this, they are working with a partner. This is especially helpful if you don’t need the students to keep the worksheet – it saves paper!
Open Ended Response
Most of what I do on Socrative is using the “Quiz” function, but there is also a “Quick Question” feature that can be useful. Do you ever have a few minutes left at the end of class and spontaneously decide to have the students respond to a question (or maybe you’ve planned it)? There is an option that simply allows you to have students respond to a quick question, be it true or false, multiple choice, or short answer. You don’t have to pre-plan anything. You can ask them the question orally or write it on the board somewhere. Then, if you have more, time, you can have your students vote for their favorite response (if you chose short answer). This would be cool for a creative writing question. In the question below, I simply asked students to order an item off a menu. I previously blogged about using the quick question feature here.
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