Formative And Summative Assessments : Assessment

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.

I am a strong believer that one test defines a students. Therefore, variety is key when assessing students. When using formative assessment I use student reflections, journal entries, exit cards in addition to non verbal communication such as thumbs up or down. I also make anadotal notes on students to help assess the overall learning journey of the student. When using summative assessments, I use district assessments, state assessments, portfolios, short answer, multiple choice, and student based projects. In all forms of assessments, students are provided the appropriate accommodations. My learning goal for assessing students is to have a valid assessment that demonstrate the student’s understanding of the specific skill. It is crucial that I understand the purpose of the assessments and the content that is being taught, therefore, I often start instruction with the assessment piece in

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

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.

Assessments play a role in helping school districts identify areas where schools need targeted support. The Florida Standards prepare students for success in college, career, and life, by emphasizing analytical thinking. These standards provide an authentic assessment because instead of just containing multiple-choice questions, students are also asked to create graphs, interact with test content, and write and respond in different ways.

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.

Assessing the children understanding is considered to be a good indicator of their learning and development process (Reys et al., 2012). Stiggins (2002) discussed the difference between the children’s assessment for learning and assessment of learning. Teachers need to be familiar with both. Assessment for learning (or as we call it the formative assessment) helps the students to learn more about different concepts and increase the opportunity to develop various skills. On the other side, assessment of learning (summative assessment) is to give the teacher an evidence of students’ achievements for purposes of accountability and reporting. For example, assessment for learning can include the teacher’s observations, in-class assignments,

Efficient educators know and understand the importance of selecting, planning, and implementing effective assessment tools and strategies that measure student’s levels of understanding. Different types of assessments are used for a broad range of purposes that include formative, placement, diagnostic, and summative assessments. However, the main purpose is to “foster learning in all its forms” (Lefrancois, 2013, Ch. 6.1). Teachers use pre, formative, and summative assessments to determine what students know before, during, and after instruction. Each measurement is used to plan, modify, and adjust instruction to meet the needs of all learners. Although each form of assessment plays a critical role in ensuring all students succeed, educators

Formative assessment-Teachers that collect evidence about what a student still needs to comprehend and adaptions that are made to meet the student’s needs.

This field experience was completed in Palm Spring Elementary School, with the cooperating teacher Barbara Saad, who has a great training experience. To accomplish the artifact's objective, I was focused on observing and recognizing the demonstration of all indicators in Instructional Delivery and Facilitation and Assessment. In a first moment, an interview with the teacher was conducted in order to determine the procedures and use of formative and summative assessments to diagnose students’ learning needs, and to inform instruction. Then, while the teacher was actively working with students, I identified procedures and use of formative and summative assessments.

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

In your units, please include a minimum of two formative assessments and one summative assessment. The formative assessments should identify the critical content knowledge and skills, and suggest a formative assessment technique necessary to monitor student comprehension. This is critically important for first and second year teachers. If first and second year teachers are not provided the key “stop light” moments, they are likely to breeze by critical precursory knowledge and skills, and then be disappointed when students do not perform well on summative assessments. The summative assessment should be designed to produce a data point (i.e. grade) that aligns with standards and standardized assessments, and may be used by a data team as part of a Response to Intervention process. The summative assessment should be common; the expectation is that all teachers instructing the course administer the common summative assessment, calibrate assessment practices, meet in PLC groups to review/discuss student work, and identify students for tier 1 and tier 2

Assessment is defined as the gathering of information in order to make an informed decision (Charlesworth & Leali, 2011, p. 373; Puckett & Black, 2000, p. 9). Assessment should support learning, and be an integral part of it. Assessment should be ongoing and part of the daily routine, as opposed to something that is done to students at the end of the instruction (Charlesworth & Leali, 2011, p. 374). The assessment should support the mathematical learning that is taking place and provide valuable information not only to the teacher but the student as well (Charlesworth & Leali, 2011, p. 374). Macmillan (2012, pp 169 -170), describe assessment as either formative or summative. Formative assessment is continuous focusing on what the children are

Students may not take it as seriously as summative assessment. It can be a time taking process. Students need different kinds of formative assessment at different stages in their learning.[2]

Assessments are integral parts of instruction, they determine whether classroom goals have been achieved, and help teachers know what areas they should focus on and maybe reteach. They are great tools for developing lesson plans and answer questions such as; “do my students possess full understanding of the material?” There are many ways of assessing students’ learning, one of which I have personal experience with are on-the-spot assessments.