Formative Reviews, also called Boss Battles, are a fun and interactive way to assess your students’ learning before a test or a quiz.

During a Formative Review, one or more students answer questions turn by turn in hope of besting the boss and earn big rewards! Because they use Hearts, Formative Reviews are unlocked in the Mastery phase.

In this article, learn more about:

• Formative Review overview
• Setting up Formative Reviews
• Playing Formative Reviews
• Sharing & importing Formative Reviews
• Managing Formative Reviews

Formative Review overview

You can find Formative Reviews in any class's Class Tools, provided you're already in Chapter 4. When you view Formative Reviews, it'll look something like this:

1. Search

Look for existing Formative Reviews, if the list is particularly long, it can help you find a specific review.

2. Create a new review

3. Formative Review name

4. Number of questions

5. Rewards

Students who participate in the Formative Review (or all students if you choose to challenge the whole class) receive this reward for winning the battle. This doesn't take in account bonus rounds rewards!

6. Edit Formative Review

Click the pen icon to edit an existing Formative Review.

7. Tags

Click on this icon to view the tags assigned to questions in this Formative Review. Students can't view those tags.

8. Boss image

This is the boss students will fight during this Formative Review.

9. Start Formative Review

Click Next to start playing the Formative Review with your class. If you already started this review in this class, this button is replaced with Resume current battle to continue or New battle to start over.

Setting up Formative Reviews

You can have as many Formative Reviews as you want on your account. Each Boss Battle you create can be played with any one of your classes, as often as you need.

Hot tip! Before you create your Formative Review, try to have a general sense of how many questions you want the battle to have, and how difficult you want it to be. This will make things a lot easier!

To create a new Formative Review:

1. Select any class on your home page
2. Click the Class Tools toolbox icon
3. Select Formative Reviews (Boss Battles)
4. Click the purple + New button

If you have no Formative Review on your account yet, the button may read Create a new battle, click on it!

First, select a name for your Formative Review. Don’t overthink this, just pick something related to the questions you’ll be asking students or to the creature they'll be facing, if you feel more fantasy-inclined.

Then you’ll need to decide how many Hearts you want the boss to have. Try to adjust your boss’ Hearts depending on the number of questions:

• half a per question is a good starting point
• consider going down to 0.25 for very easy questions
• consider making a particularly important question worth more, like 1

As a rule of thumb, consider creating Boss Battles where the total Hearts subtracted by questions is a little higher than the boss's Hearts.

Example:

If you have a Boss Battle with 20 questions, and they're all worth 0.5 , by answering all the questions correctly, students would deal a total of 10 to the boss. This would be REALLY difficult!

Consider having the hearts set to 8 or 9 for an easier battle.

You can also make some questions worth more but don't forget that students will lose this value if they don't answer correctly!

Don't want to bother with all these numbers? Try out the Quick Review feature for a different review experience!

Then, select the image of the boss you want your students to face. Try to vary the images so your students can see all the different monsters! You can even use the more threatening-looking monsters (like the Fire Stalker or the Drakan) for more difficult battles!

Click the purple checkmark when you’re ready to continue.

Next, you’ll need to enter questions for your Formative Review. If you have already created Formative Reviews, you may already have existing questions you want to use again. To do so:

1. Click on the Use existing button
2. Check the checkboxes of all the questions you want to add
3. Click the purple checkmark to add the questions to your current review

Otherwise, you’ll need to create your questions from scratch. To begin, click on Add a new question above the question list.

Enter your question in the text field on the righthand side panel. You can format it with the editor (to have bold text or a list, for example) or insert pictures or videos! If you want, you can even attach files.

Decide if you want your students to provide a short answer or select one answer of multiple choices. Don't forget to click the checkmark to indicate the correct answer for a multiple choice question!

If you want, you can add tags to better identify your questions (don’t worry, your students won’t see those tags!)

Click the purple checkmark when you’re done creating your question. Once you’re done, the question appears on the list on the lefthand panel.

You’ll notice that you need to select a Heart value for this question. Most questions should be worth very little Hearts so that the impact on students is not as hard to manage: consider setting this value from 0.25 to 1 , depending on the question.

A particularly difficult or important question could be worth 2 or 3 . Remember that if a student (or team!) answers incorrectly, they’ll automatically lose that Heart value and 3  is a LOT for Mages!

Once you’re done entering all your questions and their combined  value is higher than the boss’ Hearts, click the purple checkmark to proceed to the options.

First, enter a reward for your review: it can be Experience Points and/or Gold Pieces, but a reward is needed! 

When students defeat the boss (remove all its Hearts), all other questions are converted to bonus rounds. In the options, you can define the rewards students will earn for each correct bonus round answer.

Finally, you can choose to turn on or off the following options:

• Displaying the questions in random order
• Enabling or disabling critical hits and misses. When a student (or boss!) lands a critical hit, the damage is doubled. A miss is, well, a miss, meaning that either the students or boss will not lose any Hearts regardless of the outcome.
• Manually revealing who will need to answer a question after the question is displayed, making sure all students keep paying attention since they don't know whose name will come up.
• Enabling or disabling Hearts loss for students. Yes, this means you can make it so that only the boss loses Hearts!

When you click the final checkmark, you’re ready to use or share your Formative Review! If you haven’t entered enough questions for students to be able to best the boss, you won’t be able to share your Formative Review with other teachers.

Playing Formative Reviews

To start a Formative Review with your students:

1. Access your class' dashboard
2. Click on the Class Tools icon
3. Select Formative Reviews (Boss Battles)
4. Find the Formative Review on the list
5. Click Next in the lower right corner

You’ll then need to select an opponent. If you set up teams in Classcraft, you’ll be able to challenge your students on an individual or team basis.

Note that absent students can't partake in Boss Battles and absent students on teams that are playing won't receive any rewards for the battle.

Pick one of the three tabs first. Do you want to challenge ...

• Your whole class?
• A team?
• An individual student?

If you picked Class, decide if your students should answer individually (by selecting Students) or as teams. Otherwise, you can select a specific student or team or go at random. When you’re ready, click Start battle! in the lower right corner.

If you had previously started this review with this group, you can actually choose to start from scratch or resume the battle.

Confirm that your settings are correct and click the checkmark to begin the battle.

Here are the components of the Formative Review screen:

1. Current question

And the total number of questions in the Formative Review.

2. Question Hearts

The boss lose this many Hearts if the students correctly answer the question, otherwise, the students lose the Hearts.

3. Expand question screen

View the question full screen to display an image or table.

4. Question

If it's a multiple answer question, the possible answers are also displayed here.

5. Boss name and Hearts

6. Boss's opponent name

Their Hearts may also be displayed if you're challenging one student at a time.

7. Reveal opponent and answer to students

Let your students come up with their answer and when they’re ready, click the Reveal answer button. If you chose to manually reveal the opponent, this button will first be Reveal opponent. Click it when students are ready to see who will answer.

Once the answer is visible, decide if the students' answer is correct or incorrect. If the answer is correct, the boss will lose Hearts. If it’s incorrect, the student or students will lose Hearts.

Repeat this process until you run out of questions or until the boss runs out of Hearts. If your students manage to remove all of a boss's Hearts, the remaining questions are converted to bonus rounds for which students can earn extra rewards!

Sharing & importing Formative Reviews

To share a Formative Review with other teachers:

1. Proceed to your home page
2. Click My Library
3. Select Boss Battles
4. Find your Formative Review on the list
5. Click Share
6. Confirm the questions, answers, and rewards
7. Click Share in the upper right corner

You can send the link via Facebook, Twitter, or email, or copy the link to send it directly.

If a battle’s not complete, meaning that the boss Hearts are higher than the combined value of all questions, you won’t be able to share it.

To import a Formative Review:

1. Click or follow the link provided by another teacher
2. Click the Import this Boss Battle button
3. Review the questions, answers, and Hearts
4. Click Import at the bottom of the screen
5. Click Done

Managing Formative Reviews

Edit

To edit Formative Review:

1. Proceed to the Formative Reviews section of the Class Tools
2. Find the Formative Review on the list
3. Click the pencil icon () on the review’s line

You can then edit the Formative Review’s image, name, Hearts, etc. Click the purple checkmark to confirm and return to the list.

Review

To review a Formative Review without editing it, proceed to My Library. Find the Boss Battle on your list. From My Library, you can:

• Access the Formative Review in a specific class by clicking View in class button in the Classes tab
• View the Formative Review’s description (including rewards, Hearts, and options) in the Description tab
• Review the questions and their Hearts value on the Questions tab

Delete

To delete a Formative Review:

1. Click on My Library on your home page
2. Select Boss Battles
3. Find your Formative Review on the list
4. Click Delete
5. Click Delete again to confirm

Because Formative Reviews are not attached to a specific class, when you delete it, you'll no longer have access to the review in any of your classes.