Digital Formative Analysis

A formative assessment provides informal feedback and information during the teaching process. This assessment measures student progress and performance thus allowing further improvement and development. It can also assess the teacher’s progress as an instructor, enabling the teacher to evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching methods.

The use of formative assessment practices with ELL students are observational checklists, peer assessment, and performance skills. By having students writing a lesson plan, the roles between the teacher and the students will be changed. This is a formative assessment that engages students in distinctive ways. Students are focused on goals and objectives. It gives them confidence. They are creating a lesson. For ELLs, this is a tremendous accomplishment when done correctly, as well as when done in a collaborative classroom environment. It promotes constructive feedback. Students play an active role in formative assessment. They not only perform the task given, providing evidence of their current learning, but they are also involved in self-assessment (and sometimes peer assessment); therefore, developing and enhancing autonomy.

The term ‘formative assessment’ is used to describe the activities and processes used by teachers and learners to gather information that informs future teaching and learning. Assessment becomes formative if the information gathered is used as feedback to adapt and modify teaching and learning (Black and Wiliam, 1998, p.2). There are a variety of different methods and techniques that can be used by teachers and learners that can contribute to enhancing learner progress. These include

Assessment and data driven instruction are a vital part of teaching. Assessments are used frequently to guide the proceeding lessons. I am interested in learning more about the different types of assessments and the appropriate uses of each. I think it is critical as a future teacher to have many resources to back up my techniques, especially with the growing interest in data and tracking students’ progress. Gathering information about assessments will allow me to broaden my own techniques and strategies that I use in the classroom, more specifically the ways in which I grade and provide feedback on assessments so that students can use that feedback in a positive way. In my past experiences I have noticed my cooperating teachers providing grades on all assessments with no feedback because they want the students to correct their own mistakes. This may work on summative assessments but I think that there needs to be comments on formative assessments so that students know how to correct their mistakes for the end of the unit tests.

I believe assessment is important and is the basis of planning for instruction, whether it is diagnostic prior to learning, formative during units or lessons, or summative to evaluate student learning. Rowan’s quote in Every Teacher’s Guide to Assessment, "After all, in the end, the problem is less the idea of testing itself, but how we design them, apply, them, and make use of their data." definitely has an impact on my assessment practices. I feel it is necessary to make sure the student acquires all aspects of the learning. Assessment should be used to bring a value for students. Within my instruction, I implement daily formative assessments which may include turn and share, quick writes, graphic organizers, online discussion responses, KahootIt, and other forms. Designing the appropriate formative assessment to match the lesson is important to assess how the learning is taught and whether the students are showing progress. In addition, I have worked on building blocks of formative assessments in checklist style leading up to the point of reviewing for a summative test. Each of these are checked off as completed and instant feedback is given. Feedback from an assessment is essential to student learning and how a teacher will ensure the content is being acquired.

As a part of the instructional process, a formative assessment is very important. It is generally incorporated into the basic practices of the classroom, and provides information that teachers can use in order to adjust the learning and teaching "in real time" (Adey, 2005; Leung, 2007; McClain & Cobb, 2001). In other words, teachers see what they need to do right away, because they are engaged in what the students are learning and how the students are responding to that learning. Because of that, formative assessments are good at helping both students and teachers stay informed about the understanding students are having regarding a particular lesson (Clarke, 2001). Because that information is provided so quickly, changes can be made if there are problems. Teachers do not have to wait until a test or other milestone indicates that there are issues with which the students are struggling, and that is very good news for the teachers and for the students who need help and support.

Formative assessments are unique in that they can be quick, do not necessarily have to be graded, and can be used as an ongoing way to check for understanding (Swearengin, 2002). I keep these considerations in mind when I implement quick exit tickets, ungraded activities, and various types of questioning. I check for understanding because it identifies the students that are struggling and the content that is posing problems for many individuals. In my opinion, many teachers have become too concerned with grades, rather than checks for understanding, and often forget that formative assessments do not have to create more work for the teacher. In fact, they assist the teacher in modifying and improving his or her instruction so that student achievement will increase (Wiggins, 2006).

Three thing that I learned about formative assessments is the following: Firstly, students should be owners of their own learning, descriptive feedback is better than grades and formative assessments is led by teacher but done with students. The most important takeaway from the video for me is the three parts of a formative assessment which is to help the child discover or point out yourself the problem, establish a goal and develop a plan to do to close that gap. I don’t believe there is a giveaway in the videos; I especially like the notion that not every child has to have the same goals. One questions that I have after watching this video is what are some tool and incorporate formative assessments in lesson plan daily.

Throughout this process, I discovered that each student should have clear individual goals that are communicated to them through feedback on both formal and informal assignments. Providing students with choice in texts can encourage students to engage in reading texts that relate to their lives, beliefs, and values. When students need help with key skills, such as grammar or identifying evidence from the text, additional practice (i.e.: with the computer program NoRedInk) and graphic organizers can help students develop skills, practice, and apply learning to their reading and writing experiences. Frequent formative assessments help me to understand students’ skill levels with comprehension, writing, and synthesis of ideas and also allow me to track student progress. Formative assessments also allow me to provide students with feedback and communicate whether

This article “Helping Students Understand Assessment” written by Jan Chappuis was similar to the other article she wrote with her husband. However, I enjoyed how in-depth she went into students becoming an active partner in improving their learning. All too often teacher gives grades to their students without their students understanding what the goal was for the assignment or where they are mastering target are in the class or assignments. Research on effective formative assessment suggest that students should be able to answer three questions: where am I going, where am I now, and how can I close the gap? As a teacher, we need to help our students answer these questions so they can make significant achievements in their learning.

The author defines formative feedback (FF) as information intended to change a student’s thinking or behavior to improve learning. It ought to be specific, helpful, timely, and not judgmental. Types of FF are: confirmation of a correct answer, clarification of the accurate response, clues, and work examples. Previous research by Swam (1983) found that

The modern educational system is characterized by an increase demand for accountability and high-stakes testing. The demand for such accountability and testing is demonstrated in the quest for the use of summative assessments that provide a summary of the learning progress of students. Generally, the push for increased accountability and high-stakes testing has contributed to the use of different kinds of assessments that are administered at the state, district, school, and national levels. The use of these various kinds of assessments is not only geared towards realization of increased accountability but also act as a means for comparing and ranking students and schools. An example of the type of assessments that can be used in this process is formative assessments for various topics such as mathematics. Formative assessments are defined as systematic procedures of collecting evidence regarding students’ learning to inform teaching practices and help students progress towards the achievement of a learning goal. There are various kinds of activities used in formative assessments including group activities.

Assessment for learning is any assessment for which the first priority in its design and practice is to serve the purpose of promoting further student learning and enabling improved student learning through purposeful interaction and providing meaningful feedback. Formative assessment is specifically intended to generate feedback and feed forward on performance to improve, accelerate and enable learning (Sadler, 1998). Formative assessment can and should occur throughout a daily class, through implementation of learning and teaching strategies that lead to both oral and written feedback. The Formative assessment approach is equitable and reliable, producing some significant indicator of student developed understanding that links directly to the syllabus outcomes. This then allows the teacher or other students to respond by trying to

Recently, whenever I hear current teachers discussing about assessing students, ‘Formative Assessment’ is sure to be highlighted. Nowadays this method (formative assessment) is becoming popular among schools and is being applied widely in schools including my own school. Loughland and Kilpatrick (2015) identified in the few past decades, formative assessment has turned out to be the main goal for teachers and educational systems. On the foundation of Loughland and Kilpatrick (2015) findings and from my experience in the field of teaching, I found out nowadays teachers and school stakeholders strongly feel that formative assessment is the best method to assess in order to enhance students’ learning. For these evident reasons, I am interested in finding

Chappuis & Chappuis (2007) states that formative assessment is valuable to academic success as it provides teachers an opportunity to adapt instruction by evidence, make changes and improvements that will yield immediate benefits to student learning. Moreover, teachers and students will utilize All in Learning – a software program that increases student engagement and provides teachers with real-time data for adjusting their lessons as needed. This program will ensure all students have access to rigorous, engaging curriculum & technology that promote accelerated learning & meets their individual needs.