Formative in a Flash - Low-Stakes Checks with AI
A practical guide to using AI to design quick, targeted formative assessments that check understanding, guide next steps, and save time.
Welcome to AI for Teachers, a 12-part series designed to help you plan smarter, teach better, and make your workload more manageable. Whether you’re new to AI or already exploring what it can do, this series will guide you step by step with real examples, practical tools, and research that matters.
🧭 This is not the only way to use AI in education. The possibilities are endless. This post is simply designed to show you one approach that might work for you, your learners, and your setting.
📝 In this post, we’re focusing on how AI can help you create quick, meaningful checks for understanding. From exit tickets to hinge questions and concept-checking questions (CCQs), we’ll walk through how to design targeted assessments in seconds, giving you more feedback, more often, with less planning.
Why This Matters: From Research to Practice
💡 Black & Wiliam (1998) – Inside the Black Box
Formative assessment is one of the most effective ways to boost student achievement when used consistently and purposefully.
How AI helps: AI tools can instantly generate a range of low-stakes tasks such as exit tickets, hinge questions and CCQs aligned to your learning objective, making it easier to check for understanding more often.
💡 Hattie (2009) – Feedback (Effect size 0.73)
Feedback based on accurate formative data is one of the highest-impact strategies available to teachers.
How AI helps: AI can help you create student-friendly feedback prompts, suggest reteach tasks, and even group students based on responses for targeted follow-up.
💡 Bloom’s Taxonomy and Webb’s Depth of Knowledge (DOK)
Using a range of question types across different cognitive levels improves critical thinking and supports long-term learning.
How AI helps: AI can generate question sets that target specific Bloom or DOK levels, so your checks align with the depth of thinking your lesson is aiming for.
🔍 Spotlight: What is DOK?
Depth of Knowledge (DOK) is a framework created by Norman Webb that categorises tasks based on the complexity of thinking required.
DOK 1: Recall and reproduction (e.g. list, define)
DOK 2: Basic reasoning (e.g. classify, summarise)
DOK 3: Strategic thinking (e.g. justify, compare, critique)
DOK 4: Extended thinking (e.g. design, analyse over time)
AI can help generate assessment items at any DOK level, allowing you to tailor your checks to suit the learning intention and stretch thinking when needed.
Use this table when prompting AI to ensure your questions match the intended depth of learning.
Step-by-Step. Use AI to Create Quick Checks That Count
Let’s walk through how a Year 4 teacher used AI to generate a daily hinge question, three exit tickets, and a full bank of possible student answers based on their science lesson content.
Step 1 – Choose the Right Moment to Check Understanding
Pick a point in your lesson or unit where a quick check can guide your next step. Think of a concept that often leads to misconceptions or that builds toward a key skill.
Why this matters: Timing is everything. A well-placed question can stop misunderstandings in their tracks.
What to watch for:
✅ Concepts with common misconceptions
✅ New skills or vocabulary
❌ Avoid checking too late (e.g. after a summative)
Step 2 – Decide on Your Assessment Type
Different purposes call for different formats. Here’s a quick guide to low-stakes checks:
Exit Ticket: A short question or task at the end of a lesson
Use when: You want to check if students grasped the day’s core ideaHinge Question: A key multiple-choice question with one correct answer and several plausible wrong answers
Use when: You need to decide whether to move on or reteachConcept-Checking Questions (CCQs): Targeted yes/no or short-response questions that check whether learners truly understand a key concept
Use when: You want to catch hidden misunderstandings during modelling or practiceQuick Quiz: 3–5 short questions that hit multiple key ideas
Use when: You want to check for overall knowledge retention
Why this matters: Matching the right tool to the right moment improves feedback and informs your next move.
What to watch for:
✅ Make sure the task is specific and linked to your objective
✅ Avoid overly general prompts like “What did you learn today?”
✅ CCQs work best when linked to misconceptions or academic vocabulary
💡 Use AI to generate possible answers too
Paste in your lesson content or learning objective and prompt:
“Based on this Y6 science content on states of matter, write 2 hinge questions and give a model answer and common misconceptions for each.”
Or:
“Generate 3 CCQs for this learning target: ‘Describe how particles behave in solids, liquids and gases.’ Include ideal student responses.”
Step 3 – Use AI to Generate Assessment Items
Now prompt your AI tool to create your questions or tasks. Be specific: include subject, year group, topic, and desired difficulty level or taxonomy tier.
Why this matters: Precision in your prompt = quality in your questions.
What to watch for:
✅ State cognitive level (e.g. Bloom: analyse, DOK 2)
✅ Paste in a short paragraph from your teaching slides if relevant
✅ Ask AI to include correct answers and common mistakes
Important note: AI suggestions should always be reviewed and verified by the teacher. Cross-check that each question aligns to the learning intention and doesn’t introduce misleading ideas or mismatched outcomes.
Sample prompts:
KS1 Maths prompt: “Generate 3 simple exit ticket questions for Year 2 on counting in 5s. Include one visual question and model answers.”
KS2 History prompt: “Write a hinge question for Year 5 about the causes of the Great Fire of London. Add three incorrect but believable distractors and explain why each is wrong.”
KS4 English prompt: “Create 4 CCQs to check understanding of dramatic irony in Macbeth. Include model answers and possible misconceptions.”
Step 4 – Use AI to Review Results and Plan What’s Next
Once you’ve collected responses, the power is in how you respond. AI can help analyse and act on assessment data faster than you think.
Why this matters: Formative assessment is only powerful when it leads to instructional change.
How to use AI for this step:
Paste in your students’ answers (anonymised) and prompt:
“Review these 15 student answers. Identify the top 2 misconceptions and suggest one follow-up task per group.”Categorise errors:
Prompt: “Group these Year 6 maths errors into categories and recommend short reteach ideas.”Write group feedback:
Prompt: “Write a group feedback comment for students who confused evaporation with condensation.”Differentiate follow-up tasks:
Prompt: “Based on these student quiz results, suggest three small-group tasks: one for full understanding, one for partial, one for reteach.”
What to watch for:
✅ Make time to adapt your teaching
✅ Use this insight to change grouping, homework, or reteach focus
✅ Don’t collect data unless you’ll act on it
Step 5 – Save and Build Your Formative Question Bank
Over time, your bank of hinge questions, CCQs and exit slips becomes a huge time-saver. AI makes it quick to organise and adapt them by topic or level.
Why this matters: Great checks deserve to be reused. Consistent questions support recall and allow you to track progress over time.
What to watch for:
✅ Store by subject, year, and type (e.g. hinge, DOK 2, topic)
✅ Label clearly (e.g. Y4 History – Romans – DOK 2)
✅ Tag with key misconceptions and model answers
🎯 Challenge: Go Beyond the Basics
Most teachers use formative assessment in some way. The challenge is to make it quicker, sharper and more responsive using AI.
This week, choose a lesson you’ve already taught.
Use AI to analyse 10 student responses to a formative task
Prompt it to generate 3 tailored feedback comments and one re-teach suggestion
Save these as part of your new “AI feedback cycle”
Next week, teach the same topic again. What changed?
📚 Resources to Support You
🆓 Free Resource
Exit ticket and hinge question templates + KS3 DOK-aligned set
Quick to edit. Ready to print. Designed to use tomorrow.
🔐 Paid Subscriber Exclusive
Formative assessment builder + visual tracker tool
Auto-generates quick checks and logs student performance over time.
🎓 Available now in your subscriber dashboard
💬 Reflect and Share
What’s one concept your students consistently struggle with — and how might a sharper formative check make the difference?
Try it. Share your best hinge question or CCQ this week. Tag a colleague and start building your formative feedback bank together.
AI for Teachers – Blog Series
You’re currently reading Post 8 in the AI for Teachers series. A 12-part guide to help you plan smarter, teach better, and save time with real-world AI strategies.
You are here:
Plan for Talk – Using AI to Build Better Group Tasks in Less Time
Plan Smarter. Save Time and Boost Clarity with AI Visuals and Dual Coding
Formative in a Flash – Low-Stakes Checks with AI
Mastery Matters – Designing Summative Assessments
Feedback Fast – Personalised Marking with AI
Data Talks – Analyse Student Work and Trends with AI
The AI Planning Workflow – From Intent to Impact