Organizing Assessments with Google Forms

Organizing Assessments with Google Forms

By:  Sarah Higley

When I began teaching elementary art two and a half years ago, I was immediately overwhelmed by the responsibility of assessing almost 400 students. The online grade book that my district provides is not user friendly for a teacher that sees every student in the school. Therefore, I set out to find my own way of organizing grades and assessments. The solution I found has served me well for nearly two years, and I hope it might give you some ideas about how you can organize your grades as well.  

First of all, this process works much better if you have an iPad that you have access to all the time. The first step is on my regular computer.  I create a Google Form for each class that has my report card standards on the top, then an empty space for the project we are working on, followed by a list of all the students in each class with the options of 1, 2, 3, 4, incomplete, and absent below each name. Yes, this step is time intensive, but I figure that the time it saves me throughout the year is worth it.  

The Google Form functions like an online survey.  I can walk around the room with my iPad and tap on the grade I want to give each student. Then the magic starts! When I press submit, the information I put into the Google Form migrates to a Google Spreadsheet! This is why I love this system so much. I can pull up a spreadsheet for a particular class and see each student’s name with a list of their grades underneath. This is a function that I cannot do with the district grade book.


Depending on how your district does grading, this system may look different for you. I would suggest creating a practice Google Form and just playing around with it to see if you can make this tool work for you in your classroom. Even if my exact system is not right for you, you may be able to incorporate Google Forms to make your assessment organization more efficient. I hope this information was helpful!