This post is part of a series investigating Mr. Sederquist’s Form Fight System. This series will also describe some changes I have made to fit the system into my class structure. Previous Posts – Form Fight Pt 2: Adding Battle Damage.

Classroom Boss Fights are an excellent alternative to traditional quizzes. First, they are just more fun and engaging. They give students an immediate sense of purpose as they use their learning to deal damage to the boss. Boss fights can be loud and collaborative as opposed to dull and tedious. I use Boss Fights though for a more important second reason. Boss Fights disconnect the assessment from the gradebook and that actually gives me better data. Students feel less anxiety about answering questions in a boss fight than in a traditional quiz format – Better Data. I can immediately identify areas of need in the moment – Better Data. Students are less likely to cheat when the assessment doesn’t affect their grade – Better Data.

The central feature of the Form Fight is the Quiz setting on the Google Form. Once the G.Form Quiz is completed the data in the quiz is automatically sent to the Response Sheet. In this form the teacher has quite a bit of data. I like to create a visual filter to help quickly identify needs of students.

Response Sheet

This is what the Response Sheet looked like for my first Form Fight trial. In this first try I create a boss fight that ALL of my Juniors would be attempting. In November 2020 my school was in a Hybrid setting so our classes are fairly small. I can quickly identify each class by looking at the Time Stamp in Column A or can look at individual needs using the student Names in Column D. In this Fight Columns E, F, and G are something I will discuss in another post. The Multiple Choice Questions that lead to the Boss HP damage begin in Column H.

These are the 8 Columns with my 8 Question Quiz.

Create a Visual Display with Conditional Formatting

In each of the Multiple Choice columns it is fairly easy to create a visual illustration of missed answers with the Conditional Formatting. To do this Right click on the Letter at the top of the column. Then click on Conditional Formatting.

In Conditional Formatting the user can set “rules” for the highlighted section – in this case Column M.

I have three rules for this column and the rules follow the descending order meaning the top rule will overrule those below it. In the image the first rule is Cell is not empty H1:O1. This means that if there is anything in cells H1 through O1 it will be filled in white. The second rule is Cell is empty M1:M160. This means that if there is nothing in the column M from cell 1 to cell 160 then it will have white fill. The final rule is Text does not contain African-Americans M1:M160. The red box shows that if the fill will be red if the rule is followed. The full text that must be contained is the correct answer and this is how the rule is created.

All I did was cut and paste the correct answer into the box where the arrow is pointing.

Visual Data

Once the Conditional Formatting Rules are set then the teacher has a quick and easy visual for data collection.

Class 1 consisted of Row 3 through 9. I can quickly see and address that fact that all of the students struggled with Question 2 (in column I) and Question M (in column M). I can also reflect on these questions later and try to determine if these deficiencies were caused by my instruction, the wording of the question, or some other issue. The visual data saves me quite a bit of time and energy.