Formative Assessment (FA)

Formative Assessment (FA) or Assessment for learning (AfL) is a planned, ongoing process used by all students and teachers during learning and teaching to elicit and use evidence of student learning to improve student understanding of intended disciplinary learning outcomes and support students to become self-directed learners.”  (From: https://www.nwea.org/blog/2021/what-is-formative-assessment/)

Dr Dylan William, in his book "Embedded Formative Assessment", provides 5 strategies (please see diagram below) he believes are core to successful formative assessment practice in the classroom:

1. Sharing learning intentions

Clarifying, sharing, and understanding learning intentions and criteria for success. That means getting students to really understand what their classroom experience will be and how their success will be measured.

2. Questioning

Engineering effective classroom discussions, activities, and learning tasks that elicit evidence of learning. This refers to developing effective classroom instructional strategies that allow for the measurement of success.

3. Feedback

Providing feedback that moves learning forward. To accomplish this, teachers must work with students to provide them the information they need to better understand problems and solutions.

4. Self-assessment

Activating learners as owners of their own learning. Teaching students to monitor and regulate their learning increases their rate of learning.

5. Peer-assessment

Activating learners as instructional resources for one another. Getting students involved with each other in discussions and working groups can help improve student learning.

GMS(P) will be adopting these 5 strategies to support the conduct of FA in daily classroom teaching.   Please see the subpages for the tools to carry out these 5 strategies.