The article substantiates the importance of incoming control for elective courses in informatics. It shows what didactic tools can be used to implement this control. Several elective courses in informatics developed by students of the Physics and Mathematics Department of the Mordovian State Pedagogical University named after M. E. Evseviev on the university discipline "Technology of development and methodology of conducting elective courses in informatics" are given. For each of them, developed practice-oriented tasks for the incoming control are given, which take into account the minimum set of knowledge and skills of schoolchildren necessary for successful assimilation of the material by the latter. Possible results of completing the tasks of the incoming control are demonstrated and it is shown what information a teacher can extract from them in order to effectively create an elective course, including the choice of forms and methods of teaching, organizing the activities of students, combining them into pairs or groups to perform joint project work.