What is low stakes assessment?
Low stakes assessment is any check on understanding that carries no consequence for the pupil. No mark in a book, no score in a tracker, nothing that follows them. Because nothing is riding on it, pupils are more willing to show you what they actually do not know, which is the information you need in order to decide what to do next.
Why it works
A pupil who thinks an answer will be judged tends to give you their best guess at what you want to hear, or nothing at all. Take the judgement away and you are more likely to see what they really think, including the misconception you most need to find.
The timing matters as much as the stakes. A misconception you spot in the middle of a lesson can be dealt with in the next ten minutes. The same misconception found in an end of unit test has had weeks to settle in.
Common formats
Each of these can be run with nothing recorded against a pupil’s name.
- Retrieval starters
- At the start of a lesson, to bring earlier learning back to mind before you build on it, and to show you what has stuck.
- Hinge questions
- At the point where the lesson could go two ways, with each wrong option matched to a misconception, so the answers tell you whether to move on or go back.
- Multiple choice rounds
- For a quick read across a topic, with wrong options built from real mistakes so the pattern of answers shows you which misconception is in the room.
- Cold call follow ups
- When a confident answer might be hiding a shaky one, ask the same pupil a second question about the reasoning behind it.
- Exit tickets
- In the last few minutes of a lesson, to decide where the next one starts rather than to grade this one.
- Mini whiteboards
- When you need an answer from every pupil at the same moment, read in one scan of the room and wiped straight after. Every format above can be answered on them, so the whole class responds rather than a few raised hands.
What it is not
It is not a test, and it does not produce a mark in a book or a score in a tracker. It is not data collection either. Once answers are recorded against pupils’ names the stakes have gone up, whatever the activity is called.
Low stakes does not mean easy. A question can be as demanding as the lesson needs. The consequence of getting it wrong is the only thing taken away.
Why it should be low stakes for teachers too
All of the above is low stakes for the class. It is rarely low stakes for the teacher. An activity prepared on a Sunday evening gets a single sitting. If it falls flat in period 4 there is no time to build another, so the sensible thing is to go back to what you know works, and the idea rarely gets a second go.
Plenary Studio removes that cost. It builds these checks and presents them on the board, and records nothing about any pupil. A resource takes under a minute to make and you see every question before the class does. If it falls flat, that is all you have spent, and you can build a different one before the end of the lesson. The class gets a check with nothing riding on it, and so do you.
Try one this week
Pick something you are teaching this week and make a quick check for it. The free plan needs no card details, and your class needs no accounts.