Boost Students' Learning and Confidence With ELA Quizzes

ELA quizzes serve as dynamic tools to gauge understanding, reinforce learning, and build essential skills. While you’re likely familiar with giving and grading these types of quizzes, are you using them to their full potential?

Today, we’re going to look at what ELA quizzes can tell you about student growth, explore common ELA quiz question types and what they assess, and give tips to help you design your ELA quizzes more strategically to get the data you need to inform instructional goals.

• What can ELA quizzes tell you about student growth?
• 4 common types of ELA quiz questions—and what data they give you
• Tips to help you design strategic and effective ELA quizzes
• How to prepare students to take an ELA quiz
• Maximize student learning with ELA quiz data and feedback

[What can ELA quizzes tell you about student growth?](id-what)

ELA quizzes can offer valuable insights into student growth that extend beyond knowledge evaluation. Here are some key areas student quiz data can highlight:

Knowledge and skill acquisition

One of the main things ELA quizzes can tell you is if your students are building literacy skills. They provide a quick and reliable way to assess whether students are progressing in reading comprehension, grammar and conventions, vocabulary knowledge, and writing proficiency.

While ELA quizzes aren’t the only way to measure this type of progress, they are one type of formative assessment you can use to get a pulse check on standards-aligned student growth.

Learning gaps

Quizzes are a great low-stakes way to pinpoint areas for improvement. By analyzing your students’ quiz results to look for trends, you can identify common mistakes or misconceptions that may benefit from reteaching or additional practice.

Students can also use their quiz scores to self-monitor their learning and progress. For example, if they miss multiple questions on the same topic, they may use that as a guide when studying independently for the next quiz, test, or assignment.

Knowledge retention

Quizzes help students reinforce what they’ve learned. This can lead to better information retention because it activates retrieval processes in the brain. Regular formative assessment, like quizzes, can encourage consistent study habits and self-regulated learning, which also aids knowledge retention and recall for knowledge-based skills.

Engagement and motivation

Regular quizzing gives students a tangible record of their progress. This can lead to higher self-efficacy and increased motivation to learn because they’re able to see themselves improving in real time. 

Quizzes can also foster active participation, especially when they’re framed as learning tools rather than just another grade. This can encourage a growth mindset where mistakes are viewed as opportunities for improvement.

Readiness for other assessments

Quizzes can act as a foundation for other higher-stakes assessments. Building knowledge in small chunks and learning test-taking strategies can help prepare students for interim and summative exams that they’ll encounter during the school year.

Frequent quizzing can also help reduce test anxiety because students are exposed to common question types and formats, such as matching, short answer, or essays. They also get a sense of how long it takes to complete an assessment and have more opportunities to practice their test-taking strategies.

[4 common types of ELA quiz questions—and what data they give you](id-types)

The most common types of questions on ELA quizzes can be sorted into four main categories, including:

1. Literal comprehension questions

These question types assess students’ abilities to identify information that’s directly stated within a passage or paragraph. The answers are usually something that they can point to in the text. Common question types include:

• Comprehension questions: These assess general understanding and ask students to identify information directly stated in a passage. They tell you if students remember what they read and if they can go back and find those references.
• Detail questions: These questions specify smaller chunks of information in a passage, like numbers, dates, or names. They tell you if students can spot or recall specific details from a passage.

2. Interpretive comprehension questions

This question group goes beyond what’s explicitly stated in a text. They assess if students understand the overall message of a text, can draw conclusions, or make judgments based on textual evidence. Key skills students need to answer these questions are interpreting meaning and synthesizing information. Common inferential and interpretive questions include:

• Main idea questions: These require students to find the central point of a paragraph or passage. They tell you if students understand the text or passage as a whole.
• Inference questions: These questions require students to make decisions, conclusions, or judgments about information that’s not directly stated in the passage. They tell you if students can use their predictive skills, prior knowledge, and critical thinking.
• Summary questions: These ask students to provide a short recap of the text. They tell you if students can pick out the main idea and key details, and put them in their own words.

3. Author’s craft, structure, and purpose questions

This category focuses on questions that cover the author’s choices for the text, like the organization of ideas and the perspective or point of view. Students who can answer these questions understand the “how” and “why” behind the writing. Common author-related questions include:

• Text structure questions: These questions ask how an author develops an idea or organizes information. They tell you if students understand the choices the author made to arrange and convey the information.
• Claim support questions: These questions involve identifying evidence that best supports a claim in the author’s argument. They can tell you if students can identify supporting evidence in a passage or text.
• Author’s purpose or point of view questions: These questions explore why an author wrote a text and how they feel about the topic. They can tell you if students understand the lens through which authors and readers view information.

4. Narrative and plot analysis questions

This category covers questions that show how events unfold in a story and in what order. They evaluate how well students understand the ways characters, plot points, and other elements contribute to narrative progression. Common narrative questions include:

• Sequence questions: These questions feature the chronological order of a text’s events. They can help you determine if students understand a narrative arc and sequencing.
• Plot development questions: These questions ask how specific lines or events, like the conflict or climax, move the story forward. They can tell you how well students understand the events within a narrative and how they relate to each other.

[Tips to help you design strategic and effective ELA quizzes](id-tips)

Beyond picking from common question types, you can intentionally design your ELA quizzes to support specific learning goals and cater to diverse student needs. Try some of these tips to create the most effective ELA quizzes possible:

Align questions to standards

By nature, quizzes are often low-stakes and short. That means you have to be really targeted about the type of questions you ask to get the data you need. When you align your ELA quizzes with key standards and skills, you can get the most out of your results.

Review your state or district ELA standards and choose or design questions that directly measure those skills. For example, if you’re teaching “The Old Man and the Sea” have a standard that focuses on identifying the theme, you could include a question like, “What are Santiago's defining traits, and how do they exemplify the theme of perseverance?”

When you use Newsela ELA as a tool in your classes, you can search articles and text sets by keyword and filter by reading skill and standard to help you find content and quizzes to target your preferred skills.

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Learn more: Newsela ELA Standards Alignment

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Pick effective question formats

A mix of question types often works best for ELA quizzes. This allows students to show what they know in multiple formats or modalities so that you can be sure of what they know and what they don’t.

For example, if you ask similar questions in two different formats and the student gets both right or both wrong, you can be sure of how well they understand the material. If they get one right and one wrong, this may indicate that they have trouble with a certain question type and may need more help to understand how to navigate it effectively.

Some question formats that are popular for ELA quizzes include:

• Multiple-choice: These questions are easy to grade and can help you determine students’ factual recall or vocabulary knowledge.
• Short-answer or essay: These questions allow for deeper analysis and assessment of writing skills.
• Fill-in-the-blank or matching: Can help you assess grammar or vocabulary knowledge.

Promote higher-level thinking

Design questions that require analysis, inference, or synthesis rather than just information recall. This allows you to evaluate students’ knowledge and skills beyond simple comprehension. Questions that ask students to compare characters, infer motives, or evaluate the author’s purpose are good choices to promote higher-level thinking. You can also extend the topics you cover in your quizzes with writing responses.

Keep design and length in mind

The optimal number of questions and question types you include in your ELA quizzes depends on the class time available, your students’ grade level, and the purpose of the quiz. 

For younger students, such as those in elementary or early middle school, your quizzes may include 1-5 questions. For upper middle school and high school students, your quizzes could be somewhere between 5 and 10 questions, depending on what you’re asking them to do. For example, you can often ask them to complete more multiple-choice questions in the time window than short-answer or essay questions.

Remember, quizzes are formative assessments. They’re short, low stakes, and meant to give a pulse check on what’s resonating and what isn’t. If your ELA quizzes are reaching 20+ questions and take the whole class period to complete, you’re no longer giving a low-stakes quiz.

Instead, try breaking these longer assessments up into smaller, more manageable chunks. You can still assess your students on all the same questions and information, just not all at one time. Try it with Newsela’s four-question comprehension quizzes!

Differentiate for diverse learners

Design your ELA quizzes so they address a wide range of student abilities. This may look like:

• Creating different versions of the same quiz with scaffolded questions paired with students’ individual learning needs.
• Adding a glossary of key terms for English language learners (ELLs).
• Including a word bank for fill-in-the-blank questions.
• Making some quizzes open notes helps students build their note-taking skills and incentivizes them to pay attention and stay organized.
• Offer the option to listen to reading passages or have questions read aloud for students with reading challenges.
• Include written or spoken responses to allow students to answer in a modality that makes the most sense for them.
• Use clear fonts, add ample spacing, and avoid overly complex layouts so students can focus on the questions and answers.

These are just a few examples of differentiation techniques you can use on your quizzes. You know your students and their needs best and can make additional adjustments for your classroom.

Make the content relevant

Include diverse texts and perspectives in your quiz content. This may be easiest to do if you’re already using diverse texts in your classroom because your quiz questions will reflect what students are reading and engaging with each day.

If you’re using standalone passages or creating fictional sentences or scenarios for your quizzes, use diverse names and situations. Focus on including questions and content that have universal themes to make them more accessible to all students.

You may also try creating questions or passages that you know directly relate to your students’ lives. Using your students' names or including places or situations from your community may help make the content more relevant.

Ensure academic integrity

Whether students are taking quizzes digitally or on paper, you can set up safeguards to help ensure academic integrity. Try:

• Using digital quiz tools that allow you to randomize question order and answer choices, or let you print multiple, randomized versions to pass out.
• Set reasonable time limits to discourage cheating due to the pressure of finishing the whole quiz.
• Include questions that require original thinking and concept application rather than just a direct recall of facts.

[How to prepare students to take an ELA quiz](id-how)

Test-taking skills aren’t innate for students. Performing well isn’t just about knowing or memorizing the content, or even practicing skills. It’s also about understanding how to prepare for and take a quiz. You can help set your students up for success by incorporating quiz-taking tips and strategies into your lessons before you put an assessment in front of them.

Try these tips to prepare your students to take their ELA quizzes:

Get organized

Most quizzes and other assessments are scheduled in advance. Let students know a week or more before you plan to give things like vocabulary or check for understanding quizzes to help them organize their study time. This is a good skill to practice in the elementary grades because creating a study schedule across teachers and subjects becomes more important as they enter middle and high school.

Keep a calendar or quiz schedule visible in the classroom where students can see it. Keep it updated regularly, removing old dates and adding new ones. If your students use planners, encourage them to write quiz and assignment dates down. 

Teach them how to work backwards from the quiz date to create a study schedule. Effective planning and study schedules can help alleviate test stress and make students feel more prepared.

Share targeted mini-lessons

Create targeted in-class mini-lessons that cover the specific skills from your ELA quizzes. This will provide students with additional practice in these skills before the quiz. This is an opportunity for them to ask questions, correct misconceptions, and practice with their peers before working on a quiz independently.

Teach the process of elimination

Multiple-choice questions are popular for ELA and other types of quizzes. Teach students the process of elimination strategy where they can eliminate answers they know are wrong, even if they’re unsure of the right ones.

Teach them to put a line through the letters of wrong answer choices so they’re left with just potential right answer choices. You can practice this skill with worksheets or other in-class assignments before students get to a quiz, so they’re already familiar with it when it’s time to work independently.

Address test anxiety

Even with low-stakes assessments, students may get nervous when they know they’re on their own and getting graded. Try some of these tips to help reduce test anxiety in your classroom:

• Start quiz days with mindfulness exercises, like deep breathing.
• Use scheduled quizzes rather than pop quizzes so students can study and prepare.
• Remind students that quizzes are learning tools, not just grading activities. This can foster a growth mindset, where mistakes are expected and viewed as opportunities for improvement.
• Consider allowing quiz retakes for certain assignments to alleviate pressure and promote mastery.
• Consider making some quizzes open-book or open-notes to help students practice assessment skills in a lower-stakes setting.

Play review games

While you can stress the benefits of students studying for quizzes at home, it also helps to do a review in class. Use review games to make quiz prep more fun and engaging. Review games can encourage students to participate and even think harder about the material.

Try whole-class games like skill Jeopardy. Another option is playing swat the vocabulary word. Write all the vocabulary words on the board, give two students fly swatters, and read a definition. The first student to slap the correct word gets a point.

Consider creating teams for your review games rather than doing individual participation. This can also help build teamwork among your students.

Make ELA quizzes part of the classroom routine

Make quiz-based learning a habit by offering quizzes weekly or bi-weekly. This consistency can reduce test anxiety, help students set routines, and give you regular data to use when creating lessons and reteach opportunities. 

Regular quizzing also gives students the opportunity to practice their test-taking skills and strategies, which they can use when higher-stakes assessments come around.

[Maximize student learning with ELA quiz data and feedback](id-data)

For teachers, quiz results give you measurable feedback about your lesson effectiveness. The data can help you adjust instruction to meet student needs. This type of data-driven approach can directly inform lesson content, reteach opportunities, and differentiation methods to support ongoing student growth.

Analyze students’ quiz results to identify common errors and misconceptions. For example, if 70% of your students miss a question about inference, that helps you determine that they need more help, and you can plan a targeted mini-lesson to review the concept.

Quiz analysis also lets you provide timely, specific feedback on errors and offer tips on how students can improve. Balance highlighting strengths in addition to areas for improvement.

Aside from written feedback, you can also give students the opportunity to review quiz questions with you in person, one-on-one or in small groups. This personalized feedback may help them correct their misconceptions for next time.

Make Newsela ELA your trusted quiz partner

Most Newsela ELA articles have a four-question reading comprehension quiz for each Lexile level. Each is aligned to two state reading informational or reading literature standards. With Newsela ELA quizzes, you can:

• Preview quiz questions and standards.
• View the answer keys and see student responses after they submit.
• Review quiz scores from your reports or from the assignments page.
• Listen to quiz questions in read-aloud mode. 
• Download student quiz data to a spreadsheet.
• Review how students are doing on each reading standard or skill.

Plus, Newsela ELA and its features are backed by multiple ESSA Tier II efficacy studies! Our ELA quizzes are associated with better MAP Growth and taking them twice per week can help students gain four additional months of literacy growth.