Google Forms in the Classroom

At the beginning of the school year, my 4th grade class read Because of Winn-Dixie. I created a packet of comprehensions questions for my students to complete after reading each chapter. Every morning, my students would have to get their packets out of their binders, flip to the right page, show me their packet, and then I could mark it off on my grade sheet. This took forever!! By the end of the unit, the question packets were torn, dirty, and overwhelming to grade.


So I decided...no more question packets! I did some research and thought about Google Forms. Even outside of the education world, many of us have taken Google Forms surveys online. Google Forms are so versatile and have changed my classroom so much!

​Google Forms can be found here. All you need is a Google account. I typically start with a new, blank form. **Note: I use the NEW Google Forms. You may have to make the selection to upgrade to the new Forms.
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My Google Forms landing page. Complete with Island of the Blue Dolphins questions!

After clicking to create a new, blank form it will take you to a page like this...

​This is where the fun part begins! You can make your Google Form replace basically any test, quiz, survey, or homework! First, decide which question type you want your question to be. Google Forms offers Multiple Choice, Short Answer, Paragraph Answer, Checkboxes, Dropdown, Linear Scale, Multiple Choice Grid, Date, and Time. With my 4th graders, I typically use M/C, Checkboxes, and Paragraph Answer.

You can add as many questions as you want! Here is an example of a form I made for our novel study on Island of the Blue Dolphins.

**Important** Your school/district might provide students with Google emails. If they do, you can set the form to require students to be logged into their account. This way, their responses will be linked to their name. If you do not have a school/district Google email for your kids, you need to create a question that asks for their name to ensure that their name is linked to their response. If you miss this step, you will have a bunch of wonderful responses to your questions, but you won't know which student submitted which answers!

After completing the form, just click Send at the top right corner. You can send the link to students using whichever platform you prefer. Personally, I use Google Classroom and Edmodo, but you could also just email the link or use other platforms like Blackboard, Seesaw, etc.



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Here comes my favorite part of using Google Forms...no more stacks of papers to grade! All you need to do is go back to editing your Form. There are two options now...

You can create a spreadsheet of your responses.

Or you can view responses by class Summary or Individual.

Personally, I love the new Individual view that Google Forms just came out with. I can see my student's work quickly and easily, and it is all stored conveniently in my Google Drive!

Another bonus...I can check homework before school! I don't have to waste class time to go around checking homework any more. I can just check the responses. If there are less . than 31 responses, I'll know that someone didn't complete the assignment. If you use Google Classroom, it will tell you automatically which student's work is missing, but that is another post for another day :) I'm also planning on doing a post on how I use Google Forms for parent feedback, bathroom passes, and for recording missing assignments!

Thanks for reading! Do you use Google Forms in your classroom?