REAL Talk
September 17
Thank you for visiting REAL Talk, a professional development newsletter created by Tom New & Shanna Piggott for the teachers in Grayslake District 127.
Summative vs. Formative Assessments
Everyday, you assess your students in small and large ways. Every lesson, every activity is an opportunity to provide feedback to your students in order to help them improve and grow. It is also an opportunity to reflect on the effectiveness of your curriculum and make adjustments based on student feedback. In this issue, we've got you covered with lots of options and ideas for improving how you use both formative and summative assessments. Reach out to us if you want help with ANY of the ideas below!
Formative Assessments
Whether planned or not, formative assessments are occurring all the time in the classroom. When we, as teachers, ask questions or pick up on facial expressions, we are collecting formative data. The ultimate goal of formative assessments is to monitor student learning so that we can make adjustments to our teaching and provide students with feedback on how to improve their learning.
Typically, formative assessments are low stakes/no stakes opportunities to gauge progress before summative assessments. However, with the increased number of project-based summative assessments, many teachers are embedding formative assessments as checkpoints to help students stay on track.
Formative assessments can be very powerful tools in the teaching and learning process if used effectively.
Examples of Formative Assessments
Bell Ringers
Whiteboarding
Doodle it
Quick Nod or Thumbs Up, Middle, Down
Quiz or Partner Quiz
Survey
Back Channel, Discussion, or Video Response
Mind Map or other Graphic Organizer
Exit Slip
Check out Formative Assessments and Their Role in the Data-Driven Classroom (Roesser, Evolving Ed) for more information.
Summative Assessments
Summative assessments are the higher stakes opportunities that teachers use to evaluate student learning. It is important that these assessments, whether traditional exams or projects, are aligned with content and skill standards identified for the unit or course. Typically, summative assessments occur at the end of a unit for students to demonstrate their mastery however, some summative projects may span the entirety of a unit or semester.
Keep in mind that a summative assessment doesn't always have to be the end of the learning. In the Edutopia article entitled "A More Complete Picture of Student Learning", Andrew Miller discusses the importance of a photo album of evidence as opposed to just individual snapshots and the need for teachers to be flexible and responsive with formative and summative assessments.
Examples of Summative Assessments
Exam or Test
Audio or Video Project
Website or Blog
Presentation
Digital or Print Publication
Build Project or Model
Event or Fair
Portfolio
Tools for Creating Formative Assessments
Tools for Creating Summative Assessments
Schoology Assessments
Schoology has been committed to developing a more robust assessment feature for teachers to use with their students. At this point, teachers can create assessments, build questions and reference materials, assign to students, and share assessments with other teachers. Create and assign rubrics to specific questions to provide students with a more detailed breakdown of their score. The schoology assessment feature also has a more detailed math editor than the original test/quiz option. Grades from Schoology Assessments can be tracked directly to the PowerTeacher Pro gradebook.
This year, Schoology hopes to add a question bank feature, more friendly printable tests, and a variety of grading views for teachers.
Unfortunately, there is no lock-down browser option that works with our student Chromebooks.
Question formats include:
Multiple Choice
True/False
Matching
Ordering
Fill in the Blank Text
Fill in the Blank Drag and Drop
Short Answer/Essay
Label Image
Highlight Hotspot
Highlight Image
Highlight Text
Math Short Answer
Number Line
Chart
Mastery Manager Item Bank 2
As a district, we have purchased a license for the online testing feature in Mastery Manager. It is possible to upload existing PDF assessments to Mastery Manager and have students take the assessments on their Chromebooks using the Exam Login app (lock-down browser). However, it is also possible to use the Item Bank 2 feature to build, share, & assign questions directly in Mastery Manager. Teachers can create questions and reference materials in "My Content" then combine them into an assessment or share them with a workgroup. Reference materials can include text, images, audio clips and videos then related questions can be linked directly to those materials. Rubrics can also be created in Mastery Manager and linked to specific, reviewable questions. To take the assessment, students open the Exam Login app in the bottom left corner of their Chromebooks and enter the code generate specifically for each class by Mastery Manager.
Note: The equation editor in Mastery Manager is more robust than the one in Schoology.
Question formats include:
Single-Bubble
Multiple-Bubble
True-False
Gridded
Matching
Ordering
Essay
Fill-in-the-Blank
Drawing
Score-only (for teacher use)
Resources for Project-Based Assessments
Cross Curricular Collaborators
