Finding Out What They Actually Know First

I remember sitting in a middle leadership meeting back in 2014, staring at a glossy PowerPoint presentation promising a “revolutionary digital ecosystem” for formative assessment. The consultant was talking about bespoke software and real-time data dashboards, but all I could think about was the fact that I had thirty-two Year 10s waiting for me in a room that smelled faintly of damp coats and desperation. We are constantly sold these expensive, shiny gadgets as the only way to understand what our students actually know, but let’s be honest: most of those tools are just extra work masquerading as innovation. If you’re trying to figure out how to check prior knowledge when you’ve only got a single photocopied worksheet and a ticking clock, you don’t need a subscription; you need something that actually works when the radiator is clanking and the kids are restless.

In this post, I’m not going to give you a list of apps that require a login and a prayer. Instead, I want to share the low-stakes, high-impact methods I’ve used over the last nineteen years to see what’s actually stuck in their heads before I move on to something new. We’re going to talk about the stuff that survives a wet Wednesday—the quick, messy, and genuinely effective ways to gauge your class without adding three hours to your Sunday evening prep.

Quick Pre Assessment Strategies for Teachers in a Rush

Look, I know the feeling. You’ve just spent your lunch break hunting down a working laminator, and now you’ve got three minutes before the bell rings to figure out if they actually remember anything from last term. You don’t have time for some elaborate digital quiz that requires everyone to find a working device.

Instead, try the “Cold Call Retrieval” approach. Just pick three names at random and ask one specific question about yesterday’s lesson. It’s not fancy, but it’s the fastest way of identifying student misconceptions before you’ve even finished writing the date on the board. If they look at you like you’re speaking Ancient Greek, you know exactly where your lesson needs to pivot.

Another lifesaver is the “Traffic Light” check. Ask them to hold up a red, amber, or green card—or just use fingers if you’re short on resources—to signal how confident they feel about the topic. It’s a low-stakes way of scaffolding instruction based on baseline understanding without making anyone feel like they’re being put on the spot. It tells you instantly if you need to spend ten minutes reviewing or if you can actually move on.

Using Formative Assessment Techniques When Time Is Running Out

Look, I know the term “formative assessment techniques” sounds like something a consultant would shout at you during a Tuesday morning INSET session while you’re eyeing the coffee machine. But in a real classroom—the kind where the radiator is clanking and half the class is still trying to find a pen—it’s just a fancy way of saying “don’t start teaching something they’ve already forgotten.” If you spend twenty minutes lecturing on a concept they mastered in Year 7, you haven’t just wasted time; you’ve lost their attention for the rest of the week.

The trick isn’t about finding a high-tech way to track data; it’s about identifying student misconceptions before they become baked-in errors. I’ve found that the most effective way to do this is to stop talking and start listening. Throw a single, slightly provocative question at the front, or use a quick ‘thumbs up, middle, down’ to gauge the room. It’s about scaffolding instruction based on baseline reality rather than what the lesson plan says you should be doing. If they’re lost, pivot. If they’ve got it, move on. Anything else is just performing for an empty room.

Five ways to see what’s actually in their heads (without losing your mind)

• Stop looking for the ‘perfect’ diagnostic tool. If you’ve got thirty kids and five minutes, just use a ‘cold call’ approach with a single, sharp question. Don’t ask “what do you remember about the Tudors?”; ask “who was the person in charge before Henry VIII took the throne?” It’s blunt, it’s fast, and it tells you immediately if you’re starting from zero or if you can actually move on.
• The ‘Low-Stakes Scrawl’. I call this the ‘brain dump’. Give them two minutes at the start of a lesson to scribble everything they remember about yesterday’s topic on a scrap of paper or the corner of their books. It’s not for marking—honestly, don’t even bother looking at them all—it’s just to see if the information actually landed or if it just bounced off them.
• Use your seating plan as a diagnostic tool. If you’ve got a group of four in the back corner who usually struggle, ask them a specific, scaffolded question. If they can’t answer, you know your ‘prior knowledge’ check needs to pivot immediately to a recap, rather than charging ahead into new content that will just leave them lost.
• Ditch the elaborate digital quizzes when the Wi-Fi is acting up or the kids are already restless. A simple ‘thumbs up, thumbs middle, thumbs down’ on a concept you covered last week is more reliable than any app. It gives you an instant, visual heat map of the room, and more importantly, it doesn’t require you to troubleshoot a login while twenty Year 10s stare at you.
• Look for the ‘wrong’ answers. When you ask a question to check what they know, don’t just celebrate the kids who get it right. Listen to the ones who get it wrong. The specific way they’ve misunderstood a concept tells you exactly where the gap is. It’s much more useful to know they think the Magna Carta was signed by Queen Elizabeth than to just assume they know nothing at all.

The reality check: What actually matters when the bell rings

Forget the high-tech diagnostic tools that require a login and ten minutes of troubleshooting; if you can’t see what they know using a scrap of paper or a quick show of hands, the tool is useless in a real classroom.

Don’t mistake “checking for understanding” with “performing a task”—if your assessment takes more energy to manage than the actual teaching, you’ve lost the room.

Prior knowledge isn’t a data point to be recorded in a spreadsheet; it’s a survival tool to help you decide whether you can actually move on with the lesson or if you need to stop everything and fix the foundation right now.

The myth of the perfect diagnostic

We need to stop pretending that checking prior knowledge requires a bespoke, data-driven digital tool or a twenty-minute quiet reflection period. In a real classroom, checking what they know isn’t a formal event; it’s a quick, tactical scan to see if the foundations are even there before you waste another forty minutes building a house on sand.

Ellery Mwangi-Selkirk

The Reality Check

Look, we’ve covered a lot of ground, from the quick-and-dirty scrap paper checks to the slightly more structured formative tools. But if you walk away with nothing else, remember this: checking prior knowledge isn’t about collecting data for a spreadsheet or satisfying some shiny new pedagogical framework. It’s about knowing exactly where the cracks are before you try to build something new on top of them. Whether you’re using a low-stakes quiz or just a well-timed question while you’re walking around the room to settle a restless Year 10, the goal is the same. You aren’t looking for perfection; you’re looking for the truth of the room so you don’t waste forty minutes teaching something they’ve already mastered or, worse, something they have absolutely no foundation to understand.

At the end of the day, when the bell rings and you’re exhausted, don’t beat yourself up if your “assessment” was just a messy conversation in the middle of a chaotic lesson. The best teaching doesn’t happen in a vacuum of perfect conditions; it happens in the middle of the struggle. If you can listen to what they know—and what they don’t—you are already doing more than most. Keep it simple, keep it honest, and remember that the best strategy is the one that actually works when you’re tired and the rain is hitting the classroom windows. You’ve got this.

About Ellery Mwangi-Selkirk

Most educational advice is written for a classroom that does not exist — twenty motivated pupils, unlimited preparation time, no behaviour to manage. I write for the room you are actually in. What retrieval practice looks like when marking is already three weeks behind, why the seating plan matters more than the starter activity, and which of the last decade's initiatives left anything behind. Nineteen years taught me that the good ideas survive contact with a wet Wednesday and the rest do not.