Using Group Activities As Formative Assessment Essay

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.

Formative assessment is a more formal type of assessing where the focus is on monitoring pupils response to the lesson and any progress made.

Through the identification of these assessment methods, I will analyse their purpose and the role that they play in my learner’s development; and how these are used to identify learner progress and confirm their knowledge and understanding. I will explore theories and principals of assessment, covering formative and

Assessments are the process of evaluating an individual’s learning. They involve generating and collecting evidence of a learner’s attainment of knowledge and skills and judging that evidence against defined standards. Formative Assessments (quizzes and practical tests) are used to

The benefits of the learner and others contributing to formative assessment and therefore advising on when summative assessment might be appropriate. The benefits of the learner develop a sense of ownership over the learning and assessment process.

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

(Formative Assessment - Assessment for learning takes place during learning, working with the pupil to determine what is being learned and identifying what the 'next steps ' should be. It is based on day to day classroom practice, where both teachers and pupils use feedback to improve the learning.)

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

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

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.

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

The purpose of this action research project was to evaluate the impact of formative assessment on fourth grade math students’ academic achievement. In order to fully understand the importance of how to drive instruction using formative assessment data one must conduct an intense research of up to date literature equipped with the professional knowledge and skills on the topic. There was an abundance of research about formative assessments and their benefits. Which give a significant amount of credible literature to express the importance of formative assessments, collecting data, and the process of re-teaching and spiraling standards though out the year.

            In today’s schools, teachers are trying to decide which form of assessment, formative or summative, is a better measure of student’s abilities. Teachers are constantly pressured to make sure their students are doing well on state wide assessments, therefore, making sure their students have the skills they need to succeed on these tests is extremely important. Formative assessment gives the student and teacher feedback as the information is gathered (Cotton, 2017). Where summative assessments are better for capturing the amount of material learned and the quality of learning at the end of a large unit or amount of information (Dixson and Worrell 2016). Teachers are on the warpath researching which method is the most effective way of assessing students.

Summative and formative assessments are two types of evaluations which have distinct purposes. The need for summative and formative assessing gives the targets’ evaluation a focused purpose. Therefore, exploring summative and formative assessment strategies help identify the strengths and weaknesses of a student learning outcome. Formative assessment observes the targets’ developmental learning now, therefore determining the targets’ learning level; summative assessment determines the targets future learning objectives (Yu, H., & Li, H. 2014).