Using Microsoft Forms to Assess Reading Comprehension

I recently created multiple choice reading comprehension quizzes for each of the Georgia Children's Book Award nominees using Microsoft Forms. Our Helen Ruffin Reading Bowl team reads these titles. The quizzes are a useful tool to determine which books were read and understood by which team members. We will use the results of the quizzes to help select which students compete at our competition in January.

Using Microsoft Forms for reading comprehension quizzes offers many benefits! It is very easy to use (for both teachers and students) and offers the option to quickly check students' scores. Here is how I create reading comprehension quizzes using Microsoft Forms in just a few easy steps!

Open your Office 365 account and select Forms. The dashboard shows all of the quizzes you have created. To create a new quiz, select "New" in the upper left corner.

First assign a title to your new quiz. I use the title of the book and the author for reading comprehension quizzes. You can also add a picture of the book cover by selecting the picture icon to the right. Next select "Add question." Forms allows you to choose from five different types of questions. For this type of Form, select "Quiz." With a quiz question, you provide multiple choices and designate one of the choices as the right answer so that the quiz grades itself after students finish the last question.

Next, add your question and answer choices. Forms defaults to two answer choices, but you can add more. Be sure to select the "Correct answer" so that the quiz is self-grading. Also move the slider at the bottom to "Required" so that students can't accidentally skip questions. Repeat these steps as needed until your quiz contains all of the necessary questions.

 This is what the Form looks like in the creator's view once it has been completed.

Forms also allows you the option to

• customize the look of the quiz with different themes
• download a QR code that takes the user to the quiz
• create a link so that you can email the quiz to students or link it to your website
• set a deadline for taking the quiz
• export results to for easy student data documentation