Read on to find out more about how to use different question types for your K-3 classroom, add content, examples of sites you can embed into your formatives, and inspiring examples of formatives you can clone!

Using different questions and content

Here are some of our favorite question types to use in K-3 classrooms.

🌟 Drawing

Students can draw, type, underline, and even upload images in a Drawing question. Teachers can likewise draw, type, and upload images to the background! Here are some of our favorite uses for K-3:

Have students watch a read-aloud video, then draw a scene or character.
Upload a learn-to-read passage and have students circle rhyming words.
Draw to assess - upload a diagram and have students color or label it
Type sentences and ask students to circle spelling errors, add punctuation, and more!
Upload a blank graph for students to create bar graphs from data tables.

Tip: If your Drawing question has a final answer, you can add Show Your Work to any question type. Formative can auto-grade your students' final answers for many question types (make sure you set an answer key!), but you can also see your students' work - the best of both worlds!

🌟 Audio (Paid Teacher / School & District feature)

Add audio content to any question! When students are learning to read, they need verbal directions. Audio can be great for differentiation with older students too!

Listen to student responses with the audio question type.

Add a fluency passage and have students record themselves reading aloud.
Have students count aloud.
Ask students to share how they are feeling.

🌟 Matching

Use the Matching question type to have students match images to words, number pairs, and more!

🌟 Multiple Choice

Classic multiple choice questions are great to guide student learning in any subject, especially when students are learning a new concept. Make sure you have an answer key!

🌟 Practice Sets for Foundational Skills

Practice Sets are an excellent way to provide K-3 students with repetitive, low-stakes engagement to build fluency in literacy and numeracy. Because Practice Sets can be played in Flashcard, Match, Quiz or Write modes, they turn essential drills into engaging activities.

Sight Word Fluency

Building a strong sight word vocabulary is the foundation of early reading. Use Practice Sets to help students move from decoding to automaticity:

Visual-to-Audio Matching: Create cards with a sight word on the front and an audio recording of the word on the back.
Sentence Integration: Place a sight word on the front and a simple sentence using that word (with an accompanying image) on the back to provide context.
Spelling Scaffolding: Use the front of the card for the word and the back for a "Fill-in-the-blank" where the student must identify the missing letter.

Math Facts & Number Sense

For young learners, moving from concrete to abstract math is a major milestone. Practice Sets help bridge this gap:

Subitizing Practice: Show a "dot plate" or ten-frame on the front of the card and the corresponding numeral on the back to help students recognize quantities instantly.
Addition & Subtraction Facts: Create sets for "Doubles," "Making Ten," or basic fact families to build mental math speed.
Shape & Attribute Recognition: Use images of real-world objects on the front (like a clock or a slice of pizza) and have the back identify the geometric shape (circle or triangle).

Tip: Practice Sets are perfect for independent station rotation or early finishers. Since they provide instant feedback, students can practice their sight words or math facts accurately without needing a teacher to check every card!

📌 Useful sites that you can embed into your formatives

You can embed websites anywhere in a formative as a content item. Paid Teacher plan subscribers and School & District licensed members can embed them directly within a question. Check out our Embed article for instructions.

Great Science sites that embed into formatives include:

🌟 Edpuzzle

🌟 GeoGebra

🌟 Starfall

You can add Safe YouTube and Khan Academy YouTube videos as content items by adding them as a video. Paid Teacher plan subscribers and School & District licensed members can even embed them directly into a question!

📌 Great examples of K-3 formatives

Check out these awesome formatives, created by other K-3 educators! Click on the title to clone them to your dashboard, and you can edit and assign them to your classes!

🌟 Formative with K-3 Students (K-3rd grades): check out this sample formative that has examples of K-3 questions for every subject!

🌟 Letter A (K-1st grades): this formative is a great example of using Formative to guide phonetic mastery.

🌟 Read-Aloud Giraffe's Can't Dance (K-1st grades): this formative makes great use of video and audio to guide student learning.

🌟 Telling Time (2nd-3rd grades): this formative uses multiple question types to help students show mastery of telling time on a clock.

🌟 Math operations (2nd-3rd grades): this formative uses arrays, skip counting, and number sentences for multiplication and division practice.