Assessment and instruction go hand in hand in a classroom that focuses on the student. Join me as we explore a variety of digital tools and strategies to assess student readiness in order to make decisions about current and future instruction.

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Formative assessments provide stakeholders with critical feedback students need to achieve learning objectives. This enables them to close the gap between where they are, and where they need to be (the learning target or objective).

Feedback’s effect size ranges from 0.62 in the most up-to-date meta-analyses at Visible Learning Meta X to 0.72 as shown in John Hattie’s 2009 book, Visible Learning. Of course, anything greater than 0.40 accelerates student growth in one school year.

Wondering how to structure your feedback? Follow these guidelines:

• Make sure the feedback is factual, objective, and safe.

• Prioritize feedback to address the most important needs first.

• Limit the feedback to two to three specific recommendations linked to the learning goal(s).

• Ask a student to tell you what he thinks you are trying to say to him.

• Provide elaborated feedback (describing the what, how, why) in manageable units (don’t overload).

• “In light of what I have provided you, what would you best do next?

Checks for understanding are one aspect of formative assessment. ASCD published a book on the topic. It can be defined as:

The frequent, interactive checking of student progress and understanding. These checks for understanding identify learning needs. They also allow the teacher to track and adjust teaching.

Take a moment to explore the digital tools appearing below.

“Used effectively, checklists can help students develop metacognitive awareness of their intellectual processes.

Metacognitive research consistently suggests that students who know how to learn, know which strategies are most effective when faced with a problem or a task, and have accurate methods of assessing their progress, are better learners than those who don’t,” says Dr. Kathleen Dudden Rowlands (source).

Several tools that can help with developing metacognitive awareness are available to educators and students.

Take a moment to explore the digital tools appearing below.

Google Keep

Google Keep, which works on multiple devices, provides Post-It like simplicity. Some of its main features are listed below:

• Create and share checklists with colleagues, students, and others

• Quickly format a Google Keep note with a title and note contents

• Select a bright color for each note to distinguish them from each other

• Turn checkboxes on for your note to create a quick checklist or add dashes in front of notes to create a more impromptu list

• Use images and pictures, one per note, to differentiate between your notes

• Grab the text from any picture, which is a quick way to use optical character recognition (OCR) to scan the image to text

Self-Assessment is an integral part of the learning process. It allows us to learn more about ourselves and how we learn, but it also aids us in improving academic skills. Consider sports teams that watch film of the previous night’s game. They’re able to identify mistakes and correct them at practice.

Becton Loveless offers these suggestions for students designing their own assessments:

• Explain what self-assessment is and why it matters

• Show a model of what it looks like, preferably from previous students

• Teach students different strategies of self-assessment

• Have students practice creating assessments, then discuss as a group

• Conference with students throughout the process

Self-Judgment and Reflection

Debriefing activities as entry or exit tickets, for example, to engage students in Self-judgment and Reflection. Known as self-judgment, research has shown its importance as it enjoys an effect size of 0.75 (as of John Hattie’s latest research).

Self-judgment and reflection have the potential to “considerably accelerate” student achievement. It is proven effective when students self-assess knowledge before learning and then reflect and self-evaluate for understanding post-learning.