How to Write a Great Multiple Choice Quiz

Writing high-quality multiple choice questions isn’t just about finding the right answer—it’s about crafting questions that actually reveal what students know and how they think. In this post, I’ll walk you through the process I use to create thoughtful, standards-aligned quizzes that challenge students and provide real insight into their learning. Here's how I write great quizzes.

1. Start with a Strong Mentor Text

The first thing you have to do is choose a text that is on grade level and accessible—language should never be the barrier to success. A good mentor text will be something interesting to students or at least relevant in some ways that they can make connections to their own lives.

A good mentor text will give you multiple opportunities ask Level 2–4 questions (see Bloom’s Taxonomy or Webb’s Depth of Knowledge if you’re unfamiliar). I personally stay away from Level 1 (recall/remember) questions and save those for a specific comprehension quiz when/if I am unsure whether the students ‘got it’ or not.

While you’re reading, annotate like both a student and a literature professor:

• What are you thinking while reading a section? What would you want students to see while reading? What questions would you ask, either to yourself or your students, while reading?

• What patterns, shifts, or structures do you notice? Would you want students to notice

• Where does the author repeat ideas, ask questions, or change tone?

2. Align Skills, Standards, and Purpose

While reading, or afterwards, identify which skills naturally align with the text (theme, author’s purpose, claim, inference, etc.) and choose 3–4 standards you want to assess. Trying to test too much will give you longer quiz and may spread you too thin when you are re-teaching or assessing student mastery in one area.

Assessments should do more than test students – they should be a way to check that what you taught was learned! (it might go without saying, but make sure students have already been taught the skills you're assessing unless you’re using it as a baseline)

Your assessment and quizzes should never be a “gotcha” moment—they’re tools for reflection and growth for both you and the students! If most students bomb your quiz, re-teach or toss it from the gradebook. If even your high performers miss a question you think they should have gotten right, it’s probably good to re-evaluate it.

3. Craft Intentional Questions

Its time to craft your questions! This is the part that can be the most challenging. A good way to start if you’re unsure is to base your wording on sentence stems used in your state’s standardized tests. (Texas teachers: Lead4ward IQ tool is your friend. It’s a favorite resource of mine)

• Be clear and specific in the question itself.

• Avoid complex phrasing that slows students down before they even get to the choices.

• Level your questions:

  • Level 1 = the answer is in the text

  • Level 2 = requires inference

  • Level 3 = asks about big ideas like theme

  • Level 4 = asks why the author did something or its effect on the reader

• I have started coding my questions with the TEKS (Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills) so I know what the question should be targeting. I also started having students track their data on their own. (see here for a template based on English II TEKS)

  
  

4. Design Good (and Bad) Answers

Good wrong answers are plausible, not random. What does that mean? It means that you are thinking like a student and what ‘thinking path’ they might follow to come to the wrong answer. You’re also thinking through the things students might do if they didn’t read the text, or didn’t learn what they needed to know.

If you want a good assessment, mimic the patterns of your state’s test:

• Use similar structure, tone, and vocabulary.

• Distractors may reuse key words or concepts from the text—just misapplied.

When you get to your corrects answers, ensure one right answer is clearly best with support from the text. If you can’t explain to yourself how you would get the correct answer, it’s possible that students won’t be able to it either.

• Distractors should:

  • Be rooted in the same paragraph or section as the right answer

  • Include tempting but slightly off logic or misinterpretation

  • Sound correct to a less-skilled reader

• Randomize your correct answers across A, B, C, and D—don’t let guessers win with a pattern.

Some common strategies I use in my assessments are:

• Adding jargon or “smart-sounding” language to wrong answers. I know students who pick these answers without doing the thinking work and I know it’s what’s my state’s test does too.

• Keep answer lengths similar (or make wrong answers longer—on purpose)

• Base wrong answers on common student misconceptions

• Avoid extremes (“always,” “never,” etc.)

All of these can be used as a teaching tool for students after the test. Pointing out the common misconceptions from students (and how to avoid them) is often a better teaching moment that the lesson itself.

5. Review, Test, and Adjust

• Run a “logic check”: What steps should a student follow to get this right? How could you explain the right answer to a student who got it wrong?  Re-read? Context clues? Eliminate distractors?

• Watch for accidental giveaways:

  • Is one answer unusually detailed while the others are vague?

  • Do tone, length, or structure make the right answer obvious?

• Eliminate any extra barriers:

  • Are there terms or background info students wouldn’t know?

  • Is the question too long or confusing?

    
    

There are many times where I write a quiz and my whole first period aces it. I would love to think that they all ace it because I’m an awesome teacher, but the truth is that there could be questions that I didn’t evaluate well enough. With that in mind, field testing a quiz is great if you can, but if not, run it through ChatGPT and ask for feedback. Oftentimes, we can’t see what we can’t see until it’s pointed out.