Formative Literacy Assessment

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).

Coffey, J. E., Hammer, D., Levin, D. E & Grant, T. (2011). The Missing Disciplinary Substance of Formative Assessment. Journal of research in science teaching. 48 (10) PP. 1109–1136 (2011) College of Education, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 2 Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts 3 St. Paul School, Baltimore, Maryland Received 17 April 2011; Accepted 5 August 2011. Retrieved from file:///Users/EleanorNewbold/Downloads/Coffey_et_al-2011-Journal_of_Research_in_Science_Teaching.pdf

Carol Ann Tomlinson’s article, “The Bridge Between Today’s Lessons and Tomorrow”, discusses formative assessments and the role they play in todays classrooms. In many classrooms across America formative assessments are used to raise test scores, rather than as a tool to create open communication between students and teachers. Tomlinson offers educators 10 principles to use and apply formative assessment practices. I believe these principles can be used to increase teacher efficacy with assessment and to increase the communication between teachers and students.

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.

Formative assessment, or assessment for learning as it is often called, is the assessment that

This teacher friendly book focuses on what types of information common formative assessments can provide and how these assessments can provide timely data to help differentiate instruction (Ainsworth and Viegut, 5). What made this resource different was its “team” approach to assessment, which ties in nicely to my districts policies on assessment. The authors stress the importance of using data teams made up of professional learning communities, usually departments to create specifically designed assessments that address the same content by standard. The book also provided a very helpful revised instruction assessment model with data analysis which showed the steps of pre-assessment, analysis of results, differentiating instruction, teaching, monitoring, reflecting and adjusting, re-teaching and finally post assessment (Ainsworth & Viegut,

Assessing young children as they move through the steps of their literacy development will help teachers plan for their lessons with a greater outcome for success. Using both formal and informal assessments they can establish the child’s strengths and weaknesses as well as monitor their progress and growth. Assessments can be formative or summative depending on when the assessment takes place. Formative assessments can be administered regularly throughout the school year and assist teachers in monitoring the students’ learning progress. Where as summative assessments measure what the students’ have learned at the end of any selected event. According to Copple & Bredekamp, (2009) “Assessment focuses on children’s progress towards goals that are developmentally and educationally significant” (p. 22). Additionally, assessments can provide the teacher with the

Thank you for joining me today to discuss your daughters recent assessment scores. We do Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills assessment or DIBELS 3 times per year. This information tells us where Suzie is in her reading skills and where we would like her to be. We gave her three very short assessment only consisting of 1-2 minutes each assessment. The three assessments that we gave her where Letter Naming Fluency or LNF for short, Phoneme Segmentation Fluency (PSF) and Nonsense Word Fluency (NWF).

One form of assessment that we may all be familiar with regardless of our profession is high-stakes testing. This type of assessment provides the public with assurance that students can achieve at a level needed to function in the real world. While there are both pros and cons with any assessment, high-stakes testing should be relied on to enhance instruction and help the students and not to chastise students or schools (Vacca p. 146). Another type of assessment is called formative assessment which can be both formal and informal. These can help document students’ progress along the way and can be beneficial, especially when needing to monitor reading growth. Through formative assessment, the results help to identify the specific learning needs of all readers, as well as those who do not speak English as their first language (Vacca p.

Teaching my student reading I notice that it is a complex topic of the text, and their knowledge of their culture to construct meaning with text. I stated in one of the district often several professional learning development doing summer to improve and inform teacher about how assessment the students. There is new instant data for informal and formal assessment called illumination. We are able to assess the students and reteach the material within second of teaching the information. I will continue to implement this development can help the student with organizing, motivating, and guiding the support aids for students in classrooms.

The standards attached to this lesson plan states the student should develop abilities necessary to do scientific inquiry and understand scientific inquiry. Students should also be able to develop an understanding of science as a human endeavor and the history of science. Again, the formative-assessment doesn’t

It is crucial to assess every young adult’s level of literacy to be able to use the most effective method to teach. Literacy is defined as the ability to speak, write, read, and interpret written information at eight grade level or higher (Bastable, 2014). Not only do adults need to be literate but also have the capacity to effectively understand and process medical terms and have a basic knowledge of diseases also known as health literacy (Bastable,2014). Research shows that patients with low health literacy have a poor understanding of their disease (Powell et al., 2007). Patients in this circumstance are at a high risk of accelerating their diabetes related complications. This lack of understating leads to: uncontrolled

There are a range of assessment for learning strategies that can be used to help students develop language, literacy and numeracy. These strategies can be integrated in classes where students demonstrate a diverse range in language, literacy and numeracy skills (LLN). William (2009) outlined 5 assessment for learning strategies that can be used to assist teachers in creating assessments that are not only summative but as ongoing formative activates that students can benefit from. In this essay we will explore 4 of the strategies from the original 5 mentioned by William (2009) and discuss how they can be integrated in the classroom and how feedback can be provided to both students and their parents. The 4 strategies include clarifying learning

The goal of teachers is to instruct students at grade level, guide students in their learning and improve their skills by the end of the year. In the article, “Using literacy assessment results to improve teaching for English-language learners,” by Lori A. Helman (2005), the researcher wanted to discover: “Is literacy testing just getting in the way of good teaching? Or, can the results of literacy assessments assist teachers as they work to meet the needs of learners from diverse languages and backgrounds in their classrooms?” (Helman, 2005, p. 668). Throughout this article, Helman provides background information about the context of the current assessment, assessment results, and two case studies of English-learning beginning readers. The

Assessment tools take on many forms within the school as well as individual classrooms. Assessments must be administered informal as well as formal in order to determine student needs, differentiate instruction, personalize learning and gauge the effectiveness of instruction. They can vary from a simple teacher observation to a standardized test that is given on a yearly basis (Vacca & Vacca, 2008). “Assessment goes hand in hand with teaching. It is an ongoing process that informs and guides instruction” (Tompkins, 2006). Assessment tools are an imperative part of reading instruction as it is used to determine if the goals of literacy instruction are being met for students. As a classroom teacher, I have the knowledge to choosing appropriate assessments and then administering them. As a result, I feel that I have successfully mastered IRA Standard 3.1 (637.1, 637.2, 637.4, and 644.1). The significance of appropriate assessment and use of the latest research based practices cannot be overstated in value to a school’s success with its literacy program. I have a working knowledge of assessment and its importance in differentiated instruction as well as a solid grasp of educational research and best practices. This is imperative to meet the diverse needs of all students. This ability demonstrates that I have successfully mastered IRA Standard 2.2 (643.1, 643.3, 636.2, and 64.1). When a teacher is able to integrate and manage both types formal and informal assessment tools, the