Formative Assessment Reflection

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

Formative Assessment- The formative assessment is the annotated passage reading assigned on the first day. If students read and took notes, answering the five w’s of who, what, where, why, when they will receive the full ten points. The other formative assessment will be the participation and note sheet handed in at the end of day four regarding Aaron Huey’s photos. If students took notes, wrote their opinion and joined in class discussion at least once they will receive the full ten points.

With recent changes and reform to primary education assessment and removal of standard levels, assessment is the subject of great discussion in education. In this assignment I will be investigating the practice of questioning within formative assessment; the theory behind it, strategies and evidence I have seen in the autumn term of my ‘Home’ placement. I have chosen to investigate this aspect of formative assessment in mathematics, as this is the subject in which I have had most teaching practice and opportunities to formatively assess children’s progress and implement Assessment for Learning. It has also been an area I have found challenging, in particular how to question children to promote higher order thinking in mathematics, a subject that many children find challenging.

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.

Assessments are vital to the educational process. They provide feedback about what the students know and what they may need to learn in order to obtain the content within a given curriculum. It provides teachers with a glimpse into the student’s readiness on a particular topic or subject. One of the six key principles of having an effective differentiated classroom is having a formative assessment that informs teachers on the effectiveness of their teaching. It also provides teachers with the readiness levels of their students and shows them exactly where the students’ readiness, interests, and learning profile needs really are (Tomlinson, 2014).

The first article that I viewed was on Edutopia and it was titled Why Formative Assessments Matter. This article was a very helpful in that it was a review of what formative assessments are, why they are used, and when and how you use them. The middle part, why they are used, it reinforces that they are used for, to inform, not to punish. This is important to remember as we are assessing and planning instruction for students each day. Learning and showing what you have learned should never feel like a punishment. At the end of the article, in the last section, there were suggestions on ways to formatively assess students in a way that would not feel as though they are being punished. Instead, they are enjoying showing what they have learned. The last tip in this article was to watch, look, and listen. It is important to remember that to formatively assess students you must constantly

Reflective Assessment of Outcome of an Interview with a Practitioner in the Digital Arts Domain

In these last few class sessions, we created a nontraditional formative assessment. With this, I learned that the simpler the activity instructions are, the better. This way, if there is a sub in your classroom, the they can easily read and understand the activity to give to the students. Other things to include in the teacher instructions, includes groups members, materials, and how much time should be spent on this activity. If your students are 2nd grade or older, there should be easy to read and understand instructions for the students. If your students are younger than 2nd grade, then there should be student instructions within the teacher instructions for the teacher or sub to read to the class. Either way, student instructions should

Formative assessments are non-graded, during instruction, checks for understanding. Effective formative assessments are part of a planned process of instruction that regularly monitors student comprehension and understanding. For the unit you are fully developing, please include a minimum

How do we improve the quality of teachers we have in the classrooms now effectively. Wiliams explains at the end of chapter one, “we have to improve the quality of those teachers already working in our schools” by “love the ones you’re with” strategy (Wiliam, 2011). Then in chapter two it discusses how formative assessment is used and multiple ways, which I try to find ways I can help teachers within the classroom. The most effective example that Wiliams gives in chapter two, in my position is example the one dealing with developing professional development for teachers in math (p.40).

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

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 my short period of teaching, I have experienced many different types of assessments, those that were administratively required and personally selected. One particular style of assessments that I often use is curriculum-based measurement assessments (CBM probes). On a daily basis I test/quiz my students to make sure that they understand each required step to solve the problems. Sometimes this comes in the form of a quiz, and other times it is presented as a quick check that lasts about a minute long during my class. According to Kubiszyn and Borich (2013) the frequent administration of these brief formative test allows me to make daily adjustments to instruction, when needed, to maximize my students learning. As a result, curriculum based assessments are effective for my students because we can always go back and revisit a topic or concept

Assessment is a tool and it has a variety of purposes or functions. Sometimes we call that the formative purpose the informative meaning for learning. The formative assessment information is used to figure out what we should be doing next and how we can adapt and improve future learning. In some cases, we need to asses because we need to figure out how well all of our students have done or mastered a particular content for grading purpose so that is the case we call the summative function of an assessment. According to Guskey (2003), assessment helps teachers to improve the quality of their teaching by identifying what works or doesn’t work in their classroom. As educators, we use formative assessment