Two Methods Of Formative Assessment

An accurate Assessment is critical; it is this assessment that will ultimately be what is used when developing the foundation of the student current and future academic plans. These assessments should be customized for the individual student and given continuously. This constant adaption is needed in order for us to be able to understand how to maintain the students every changing growth and development. It is also these assessments that

Assessment for Learning is defined as “the process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by learners and their teachers to decide where learners are in their learning, where they need to go and how best to get there.” (Assessment Reform Group, 1999). A key starting point for this piece of work was ‘Science Inside the Black Box’ (Black and Harrison, 2004, p1) which was written to ”offer advice to teachers on how to interact more effectively with students, on a day-to-day basis, promoting their learning”. They explain that ”formative assessment has both generic features, i.e. features which will apply to learning across all stages and all school subjects, and features which are specific, for example to primary teachers and to individual subjects” (p2).

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

Initially in this assignment, I intend to describe and evaluate two different assessment methods, which I use to assess the progress of my learners.

The term of formative assessment is no matter undertaken, teachers's feedback must be objective and fair, because if formative assessment does not dealt well, it will not produce good results. For example, in order to encourage the students, no matter how students perform, some teachers always say to students "very good", or “good”. If students find no matter how they perform, they will easily get praise. This will be very hard to move students to a higher goal. Therefore, although praise is very important, it must be based on students’ true progress. Students need to know where they do well, so that they can progress faster.

The assessment used at the end of a learning programme to determine finally whether the learning programme to determine finally whether the learning aims have been reached can be described as summative. It is often essential to fulfil contractual obligations with external bodies, and correct execution is necessary to ensure financial recompense. It can have real value to the learner as it offers recognition of achievement, but can cause anxiety in more nervous learners as the finality of the exercise is realised.

The assessment method must take into account the characteristic of the learner and needs to be consistent and relevant to what is being assessed. The assessment will not only focus on improving the learning, it will measure their achievements and also remind the learner of how they are progressing.

Furthermore, the purpose of these achievement tests are to measure the efficiency of the schools. Consequently, every year schools have to administer a standardized achievement tests to students to evaluate how much they have learned throughout the year. These tests not only evaluate the students’ progress but also the teachers, who are considered responsible for their learning. Unfortunately, not many of us have been very keen of these tests. The reason why, is

According to Mc Loughlin and Lewis, (2009), “standardized test are great sources of information when assessing a child”. However, there is no one to one determination between performance on an intelligence test and performance in school. Other aspects for consideration, includes motivation, life experiences, one’s health and emotional state and the individual’s talents and interests. Methods of Assessment Formative assessment techniques monitor student learning during the learning process. The feedback gathered is used to identify areas where students are struggling so that instructors can adjust their teaching and students can adjust their studying, (Wechsler 4th ed., 2003).

Formative assessment takes place during learning and is aimed to help learning and teaching by giving appropriate feedback (Lewy, 1990). Nitko (1993) named two purposes of formative assessment: (a) selecting or modifying learning procedures, and (b) choose the best remedies for improving weak points in learning and teaching. Gattullo (2000) characterized formative assessment as “(a) it is an ongoing multi-phase process that is carried out on a daily basis through teacher–pupil interaction, (b) it provides feedback for immediate action, and (c) it aims at modifying teaching activities in order to improve learning processes and

In order for all students to benefit in the maximum capacity, teachers should use multiple ways of measuring progress to match different types of students. Students should be placed in groups based on their learning ability and level of progress. One group may consist of students who are disadvantaged or behind, one group may consist of exceptional students, and a third group may consist of students who are somewhere in between. A standard system of providing marks should remain in place for the exceptional students and the “in-between” students. For students with noticeable disadvantages, teachers should implement a more formative approach that does not focus as much on making particular scores. For high-achieving students, using formative assessment methods can perhaps be used to supplement their learning experience with additional opportunities to stretch themselves. For the students that are in the “exceptional” group, the teacher may offer an additional “challenge” assignment or project in which the students in this group can evaluate each other or the teacher can provide feedback to the students without giving an actual grade on that particular assignment. All students will then be able to learn on their own level.

There are targeted learning goals for all students, and these are based on standards that are set by those higher up than the teachers (Black, 2007). There are many ways that formative assessments can be used, and many formats in which they can be appeared. It is important that they are distinguished from summative assessments, however, and there are several ways in which that can be done (Black & William, 1998; Blatchford,

Whether formative assessment is the best method to be used to assess students, can a particular method of assessing students have an impact in students’ learning, is teacher’s role in assessing students’ important for students learning and does students’ voice and formative assessment have any relation in enhancing students learning, are some questions that I want to get crystal clear answers for and look into with keen interest to find out whether students learning is enhanced through formative assessment. Hence in this essay I will be digging into, a descriptive, a critical and a reflective deep look through my own experiences, researches and theories in the related field on the questions or issues mentioned above to find out whether formative assessment in real enhances students’ learning. The main focus of this essay is the urge of finding out whether formative assessment in real enhance students learning. With the high hope of applying and practicing every little bit of information that I compile from the readings into the current practices in any correlated

The goal of educational assessment is to record, evaluate and enable improved student learning. The monitoring of student work, through developing understanding of key subject concepts and their achievement of syllabus objectives requires comparison against outcomes and standards. These outcomes and standards help define the criteria which is considered essential and relevant for assessment. Through correct implementation, integration, and reliability and validity, all forms of assessment should enable improved student learning when teaching is targeted towards syllabus outcomes, objectives and through highlighting gaps in student knowledge.

The previous chapter gives the background of this study, the aims and objective as well as the motivation for doing this study. In this Chapter we will review past finding of the BSC. The purpose of this chapter is to provide relevant literature in the field of BSC linked between measuring performance.