Formative Assessment

What is Formative Assessment?

Formative assessment refers to a wide variety of methods that educators use to receive feedback for the benefit of students and teachers. This feedback allows teachers to make adjustments to their instruction; for students, they know what they need to do to improve and are given time to make those adjustments. In order for formative assessment to be successful, the relationship between teacher and student is paramount. In the end, the purpose of formative assessment is to progress learning. 

Formative assessment does not involve grades or marks, whether numeric or letter grades. Instead, it is about comments, feedback, and progress. Formative assessment is at the heart of student-centered assessment, taking place primarily in the classroom as a part of the learning cycle. It can be both formal or informal and happens minute by minute, day by day. Formative assessment is about learning, forward progress, and ensuring students feel comfortable demonstrating their learning without the fear of making mistakes. In the book "Grading for Equity," Feldman captures the importance of the student-teacher relationship in regard to the learning cycle. Speaking about teachers, he states, 

"Most of us entered teaching to build meaningful relationships with young people, to engender in them a sense of trust and safety by accepting mistakes along a path to proficiency...Effective teacher-student relationships require students' confidence that the classroom is a space to take risks without penalty, to disclose weakness without being judged, to simply feel safe knowing that they don't have to perform perfectly day in and day out" (p. 32).