Forms for More than Formatives: 5 Different Ways to Use Google Forms in the Classroom

Hosting a party and need people to RSVP? Trying to organize a potluck and need to figure out what people are bringing? Randomly polling your friends just to see what they think your best attribute is? Google Forms is there for you.

With the addition of the self-grading feature in Google Forms, Google finally made Google Forms a self-sustaining tool that is incredibly useful in the classroom without any additional add-ons when it comes to quizzes. 

However, if we just limit Google Forms to quizzes and surveys, we are missing out on some powerful ways to use the tool in our classes. Here are five of the best ways I've found to use Google Forms in different ways besides as a quiz or survey.

1. Rubrics

Especially when it comes to assessing presentations, Google Forms works incredibly well as a rubric. You can set it up either as a multiple choice question, a linear scale, or a grid. I prefer the multiple choice question because, though it's a bit less visually appealing, it allows you two write the rubric success criteria next to each score. Here's what my rubrics look like.

Be sure to include a name section at the top, and then I like to include a comments section at the bottom. When it's all ready to go, simply click the preview button, and you are ready to go. Once you've filled it out and submitted it for the student, all you need to do is click to submit another entry, and you are ready to go again. The nice thing is that it collects all the data into a spreadsheet, and you can also get a nice class overview in the results window.

2. Planning Guides

Whether it's planning an essay or planning a project, Google Forms can come in really handy. You can develop questions to help students process through what they will need to have in their project. For some of my students who need extra scaffolding with their writing, I have them use a Google Forms before their essay that just has paragraph questions. I try to avoid having them just fill in a box and plug it into their essay, so I ask more conceptual questions like, "What is the purpose of your essay?" or "How does the topic of your essay connect to real life?" While these questions won't force their essay into a rigid formula, it helps them come up with what needs to be in their writing.

If you go into the settings option, you can also check the box to ensure that the students get an emailed copy of their responses. That way they will always have their notes, outline, brainstorm, etc. in their email, which makes it much harder to lose it. 

3. Differentiation (Review)

We all know the scenario: you assign the reading, half the students do the reading, and the other half fall behind. If you use some assessment data to identify the students who either aren't reading or don't understand the concepts, you can use Google Forms to add additional support. For example, if I'm reading a novel in class, every few chapters I will create a Google Form that includes short videos or links to summaries for each chapter and a few questions after each link or video. Using assessment data, I'll assign that Google Form to my struggling students, and they can go through it and get caught up to the rest of the class. Here's what that looks like:

3b. Differentiation (Part II)

I don't want to include a long section here because I already blogged about this, but if you would like to know more about how to develop lessons and assessments that include immediate differentiation and reteaching, check out my blog post titled, "If The Get It Wrong, Then What?: Differentiation with Google Forms," or you can watch the video below.

4. Reflection (Teacher and Student)

I can't tell you how many times in the past I finished a unit and had all these great ideas on how to change it, and then when the next term rolled around, I couldn't remember any of my ideas. To remedy that, I started using a Google Form to record my ideas. It's a super simple form, but I just have a space to write in the unit or lesson, what I liked, what I didn't like, and ideas for changes. It saves it in a spreadsheet for me, and then I can go back in before I teach that unit or lesson again and make the changes I wanted to make. 

On the student side, I will have them do something similar after a major assessment or after reviewing their scores throughout the course. While the questions look a little different, the concept is the same. I have them reflect on what they did well, what they struggled with, and how they can improve. While it doesn't magically fix the problem of repeated mistakes, I've found that it makes handing back assessment results much more focused on future learning instead of just being focused on the overall score.

5. Choose Your Own Adventure - Groupings or Activities

I loved those 'choose your own adventure' stories as a kid. You never knew what was going to happen, but you were somehow okay with whatever the result was simply because you got to choose. Google Forms can allow you to use that concept in your classroom in a playful way. When I do this, I create a Google Form with a multiple choice option as the first question. Then I create four new sections with different activities in them. Using the "go to section" feature in Forms, students will go to one of the four activities based on the option they choose.

While it can be a fun grouping strategy, it also works really well for writing prompts. Let's say students are writing an argumentative essay. Your first question could ask them which topic is most important to them, and depending on their answer, they will receive a specific prompt. The opportunities with this are pretty far-reaching as a way to include student choice in the classroom.

The beauty of technology is really in the ways we use it, not just to use it, but to improve upon what we already do. Many of the different ways I use Google Forms branched out of the question of, "How can I do this better?" not "How could I use technology?" If we approach technology from that lens, it truly can become a transformative tool in our classroom.

I'm sure there are a million other ways to use Google Forms in the classroom that I haven't even discovered yet. If you have a way that you like to use Google Forms, please share it in the comments below!