Any assessment activity can help student learning if it provides information that both teachers and students can use as feedback in assessing themselves. However, such assessment only becomes "formative" assessment when teachers actually use the feedback to adapt their teaching to meet the learning needs of students. This column provides ideas and techniques to enhance science teaching. This month's issue shows how to integrate continuous formative assessment into inquiry-based classroom instruction. While summative assessments certainly hold a place in education, there are several formative assessment strategies that teachers can effectively integrate into their classroom instruction, such as: (1) using questions or formative assessment probes to elicit students' preconceptions; (2) providing feedback to students through comments and questions; (3) reviewing reflection exit tickets; (4) engaging students in peer work and assessment; and (5) collecting and recording anecdotal data based on student observations The authors demonstrate how their approach of integrating continuous formative assessment within this 5E learning-cycle model can help teachers to facilitate inquiry in the science classroom by using basic principles of magnetism as an example. The authors have facilitated the presented 5E lesson in a third-grade science classroom that is beginning to learn about magnets. The lesson takes three 45-minute classes, assuming that most student groups complete the Engage, Explore, and Explain stages in the first meeting, the Elaborate stage on the second, and the Evaluate stage on the third. Throughout the manuscript, the authors have indicated any instances of eliciting students' perspectives in italicized text.