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Formative Assessments
Formative Assessments
Formative Assessments......what are they and why do we use them? I'm not sure that I do it. I bet you are using them, maybe without even realizing it, like Mrs. Ham. I asked to come in and highlight her use of formative assessment. I see her using it all the time. It can be as quick and easy as write this out on a small white board. Show me with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 ..... Thumbs up, down or sideways..... etc.
When you look into Mrs. Ham's 4th grade math classroom, you often see students working out problems on white boards. Information is presented on the overhead and she asks the students to work it out on their boards. When students are done with their work their hold up the answers. A quick scan around the class and Mrs. Ham knows which students have got the process down and which ones are not quite there yet.
Is further whole group instruction needed? Are students making the same type of errors? Are there a few students who need additional support or reteaching? So much information from a quick formative check!
The students are active and engaged. These quick checks are so routine that there doesn't seem to be any anxiety (Did I get the wrong answer?).
Formative assessments are assessments for learning. They support learning during instruction.
Formative assessments are part of the learning, so they need not be graded. They serve as practice for students, just like homework. They check for understanding along the way, guide future instruction and give feedback to students. Formative assessments help us differentiate instruction and improve student achievement.
You can see in the photo above how often white boards (some are not even white anymore) are used in Osage's 4th grade math classes.
Work it out, check with a neighbor, show your answer when you are done. Tally marks, checks by student names, a quick photo of student work.....these things will help guide a teacher to know where universal instruction should go next, will help differentiate for students and tell the teacher what supports are needed during Math WIN (What I Need) time.
Formative assessment is used to monitor student’s learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors or teachers to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning.
Summative assessment, however, is used to evaluate student’s learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark.
After you have done a check of student learning, you need to use the information to guide future instruction. Differentiate instruction based on the information you have gathered. This is when two of the critical questions from Dufour's PLC come in to play.
How will we respond when some students do not learn?
How will we extend the learning for students who are already proficient?
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