Formative assessment, in particular Assessment for Learning, created waves in classrooms in the early 2000s. Mini whiteboards, with pen and cloth, became popular and remain part of the toolkit in some classrooms. Teachers work hard to assess the learning of all students in a class, rather than just those who raise hands and volunteer answers. On occasion, whole-school policies might encourage such formative assessment to be generic or surface-level, checking how rapidly students can answer quick-fire questions, which might focus on atomistic detail. In this piece, Marshall and Procter make a case for reclaiming mini whiteboards in the history classroom, arguing a subject-specific case that emphasises evidence, judgement and disciplinary understanding. The authors describe the strategies they developed as history teachers, which have then been passed on to early career history teachers. The piece ends with an example from Lily Thorn, an early career history teacher, showing the shift in her Year 11 students’ thinking and confidence from using these specific mini whiteboard strategies...