Student Learning: Formative Assessment in the Classroom

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.

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.

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.

Formative assessments are extremely important in the classroom to tell whether students are learning the content or not. The teacher utilized hand signals, graphic

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.

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

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

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).

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

In order for teachers to use formative assessment effectively there must be these components: it must be incorporated into each lesson, must have student involvement, must collect information on student performance to determine if outcomes are meet, must give the teacher feedback to help shape and guide student learning, and must give the student feedback to help them reflect upon their learning. Anecdotal Records, Quizzes, Portfolios, and Student-Led Conferences all meet the components of an effective formative assessment and are applicable within a Social Studies classroom.

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 feedback is an instructional technique to inform the student of their progress and what the next steps to learning look like. Formative assessments are used to collect the evidence, which will measure student growth and provide valuable information to both the teacher and the student. As the unit progresses formative assessments should be used to make instructional decisions to meet student’s needs. The collection of formative data provides a clear picture of the student’s ability and can be used to directly respond to the students needs (Rea-Dickins, Gardner, 2000). Though formative feedback and formative assessment are essential to the learning process it is often left to the side, as a forgotten piece of the puzzle. To carry