How To Use Socrative In The Classroom for Assessments

One of the most challenging aspects of teaching is determining whether or not your students are properly absorbing the learning materials. This is why assessment tasks are so crucial – and with the rise of the digital age more and more platforms are offering easy ways to perform assessments.

Socrative is an example of a formative assessment platform. Teachers can use it to generate quizzes and assessments to test their students and understand their ability levels. However, how do you use Socrative in a classroom, and does it pair well with a teaching resource platform like Zenva Schools?

Continue reading our Socrative guide for a breakdown of how you can use Socrative in a classroom, combine its features with the tools on Zenva Schools, and more!

Why Should You Use Socrative’s Features In A Classroom?

Before we do a deep dive on Socrative’s features, you should know what it can offer teachers and students in a classroom. 

You must understand why you should use Socrative before we explain how to use it in a classroom; here are some reasons why you should have Socrative for a classroom.

• It can give you insight into your students with high-level analytics. The data from the analytics tool will show how students perform on the quizzes and assessments they complete on Socrative.
• It can engage students in teaching materials and courses by giving them real-time tests to ensure that they understand the teachings on a topic. Additionally, it can provide them with challenges if they find the teaching resource too easy.
• It can help students think about what they are learning with the ‘stop and think’ option; it allows students to thoroughly read a quiz question and make informed decisions before committing to an answer.

What Tools And Features On Socrative Should Teachers Use In A Classroom?

Although Socrative has a particular aim, it has numerous individual tools and features that help to achieve that aim. As you would expect, all the features either focus on improving the assessment experience for students or making it easier for teachers to understand how their class is progressing.

Here are some of the Socrative tools and features teachers can use in a classroom.

• You can set up to 20 quizzes or assessments for K-12 students at once; this allows teachers to simultaneously test students with different ability levels.
• The ‘stop and think’ tool is mainly for students who want to consider their answers more carefully; this tool is for students with slower reading or processing skills.
• The Space Race countdown mode is for teachers who want their students to learn how to work together to solve problems. It is a collaborative timed quiz that shows children that they can solve problems quickly and effectively if they work together.
• The quiz creation tool is for schools that use a teaching resource platform like Zenva Schools; the teacher can read the courses on Zenva Schools and create quizzes on the topic that will be the most challenging for their class. The tool will also allow teachers to personalise quizzes for students who need more help on a topic.
• Teachers can use custom folders to keep quizzes that they will use again for a different class; this tool saves teachers a lot of time.
• The hand raise tool is for students who are struggling with a subject. Additionally, it is anonymous so that it won’t embarrass shy students.

How Do You Use Socrative In The Classroom?

Now you know the tools and features on Socrative that can benefit schools and teachers the most, you need to understand how to use them in a classroom.

Here is how you use Socrative in a classroom.

You Can Use It To Continually Assess Students During Tasks And Assignments

The real-time assessing tools are for teachers because they allow them to simultaneously test students of varying ability levels. Additionally, they keep students engaged while learning a topic.

To set up quizzes, you can pick a quiz and then send it to an individual student or a group. You can monitor their progress during the quizzes to see if they need a helping hand at any point.

If you have students with multiple ability levels, the quiz creation tool is helpful because you can design easier or harder quiz questions. 

For example, if you are teaching a coding tool on Zenva Schools (Unity, for example) and need to teach students how to create 3D models, you can create a more straightforward quiz that involves questions on creating a basic design for a 3D model and an advanced quiz with questions on how to code a model and set up essential functions (like button mapping functions for a game).

You can also set up a Space Race quiz for the whole class so they can work together and understand how teamwork can be effective. These team-based quizzes are ideal if your students have similar ability levels.

You Can Use The Insights And Analytics To Save You Time By Understanding What Your Students Need

As well as allowing you to quiz and test students in real-time, Socrative will also compile data on their performance during the quizzes.

It does this so teachers can observe their student’s test scores to see if they are achieving what they should be in the quizzes. Additionally, it can help a teacher determine if they need to give students more straightforward assignments and tests or if they need to advance them to intermediate-level teaching resources and quizzes.

There is also an easy to access insights page; once you enter the page, you can see each student and check their test scores to see if you can find any patterns. In this manner, you can hone in on learning objectives that students may be struggling with.

Additionally, you can look at the performance of the whole class to see if you can create groups of students who can complete the same quiz during a video call.

You Can Use Multiple Features For The Entire Class At The Same Time

Large-scale video calls allow teachers to invite up to 50 students to assign quizzes and get them to complete the quizzes during the call. 

There are viewing options you can turn on if you want to see all the students in your class; this way you can make sure they are listening when you are explaining something to them or if you are directly asking a student a question.

Additionally, spreading multiple different quizzes amongst the class is useful for hosting a video lesson; when you do this, it means that you can have the whole class in a video call, even if they are completing different quizzes.

You Can Turn On Features That Support Students Of All Ability And Confidence Levels

Finally, you can use some of Socrative’s features to ensure that all your students feel included.

For example, there is a hand raise tool in the K-12 package for Socrative. It is mainly for the benefit of teachers so they can progress through a virtual lesson without constant interruptions. However, it is also a great way to include students.

The hand raise tool is an inclusive tool for students because it is entirely anonymous; students can send teachers a hand raise alert along with a question and can get the answer without anyone knowing it is them. It removes the problem of students not asking questions because they are too shy.

Another feature of Socrative is the ‘stop and think’ tool; students can use it to take some extra time before answering a complex question. It will pop up as an option for every question; if it is a timed quiz, the ‘stop and think’ button will stop the timer until you turn it off.

Thus, with this tool, even students who need a bit more time to address a question, even due to things like learning disabilities, have the opportunities they need to succeed.

How Do You Pair Zenva Schools With Socrative In A Classroom?

There are many ways to use Socrative to make it an effective platform for students and teachers. However, to take Socrative to the next level, you can combine its uses with a high-level teaching resource platform like Zenva Schools.

Zenva Schools has multiple teaching resources on subjects like coding, game development, digital systems, and more. Although it has quizzes and analytics, it can benefit from a pairing with a superb formative assessment platform like Socrative so you can make your own.

Here are the ways you can use Socrative and Zenva Schools together.

You Can Use Socrative To Test Students On Zenva Schools’ Courses

Teachers can create and personalise quizzes for their students on Socrative and use them to test their class on Zenva Schools’ courses and topics. 

You need to do two things to get the best results from this practice. First, you need to read through the Zenva Schools teaching resource and come up with some easy and challenging quiz questions. Second, you need to check the analytics on Zenva Schools and Socrative to determine a student’s ability level on the topic. 

After completing these tasks, you can create quizzes on Socrative.

There may also be some premade Socrative assessments and quizzes on the subjects on Zenva Schools; these are helpful for teachers who don’t have enough time to create a quiz on Socrative.

In either case, though, combining the two gives you a great selection of pre-made quizzes and the ability to develop your own based on your individual requirements or needs.

You Can Use The Analytics On Zenva Schools And Socrative To Better Understand Your Class

Both Socrative and Zenva Schools have analytics to determine how well students are performing on a task or assessment. By reading through both platforms and compiling the data, teachers can get a more accurate impression of how students fare with a subject.

Zenva Schools will provide insights into how students are progressing through the courses – which is viewable as an entire class or at an individual student level. The overall course data from Zenva Schools is not something Socrative can provide teachers.

However, Socrative’s analytics can provide insights into how students perform on quizzes and assessments. 

Together, you can compare and contrast how students are performing on quizzes and assessments vs. their activity with the teaching resources. In so doing, you can better change the course for your classroom as a whole to make sure students are getting the extra help they might need.

It also helps you quickly identify whether the students speeding through the courses are actually learning the material or not. This way, you’re not treating a student as an intermediate student before they’re actually ready.

Socrative Can Engage Students With Zenva Schools’ Teaching Resources

Finally, you can use Socrative with Zenva Schools to give students a more engaging experience with their courses and teaching resources. 

Of course, the primary way Socrative can do this is simply by including fun and interactive quizzes; these quizzes help students to engage with the course by being fun interactive elements and challenging. In particular, the challenge is significant, because it makes students think about the topics on Zenva Schools in more detail and retain the information effectively.

However, another way that Socrative can engage students with the teaching content on Zenva Schools is with the features of their virtual lesson function. These virtual lessons are mainly for students to complete quizzes, but they are also useful for teachers who want to walk the students through the courses on Zenva Schools and explain the quiz subjects for the day.

In so doing, you can turn what is normally a stressful experience for students into something more manageable – as you’ll be able to guide them into the learning goals with a more hands-on approach.

Similarly, a feature of the virtual lessons on Socrative that help to engage students with Zenva Schools is the hand raise tool; students who want to ask questions to learn more from the subject but don’t want to ask it in front of the whole class can use the tool. This way, you aren’t forced to simply pay all the attention to the vocal students, and your shy students don’t have to suffer embarrassment over elements they think they’re silly for not understanding.

A Final Summary On How You Should Use Socrative In A Classroom With Zenva Schools

Socrative has many uses within a classroom and can significantly enhance the students’ experience with Zenva Schools.

With excellent features for making quizzes – plus analytics to track performance on those quizzes – Socrative is a great platform for making custom assessment solutions. Students can work alone, work together, think about what they’re doing, or even take different quizzes all at the same time.

With virtual classroom features as well, you can also easily connect with students as they work through the quizzes, giving you the opportunity for a more personalized teaching experience.

Of course, you need content to test students on, which is why Socrative is best paired with Zenva Schools. Zenva Schools is able to provide digital technology content and course progress tracking to prepare students for their final assessment tasks.

With video lessons, text-based courses, and pre-made quizzes as well, Zenva Schools can save you tons of time on prepping materials so you can focus on what matters – making sure students are learning.

Overall, both platforms are a match made in heaven and give you everything you need for a successful teaching experience.