Formative assessment, also known as discovering the current knowledge and understanding of students while they are still learning, is a challenging endeavor. Designing the proper assessment can be risky because teachers use it to determine what happens next.
When it comes to figuring out exactly what students know, people need to have a look at more than a single kind of information. One data point, no matter how well-designed the problem, presentation, or quiz is, is not enough information to help plan future instruction.
Student learning objectives
In addition to the fact that various learning tasks are measured in numerous ways, it’s easy to see why people need a variety of tools for formative assessment to deploy in a low-stakes, seamless, and quick way without creating an unmanageable workload. This is why it’s critical to keep things simple.
Formative assessments need checking, not grading, as the whole purpose is to get a read on the individual progress or class as a whole.
Formative assessment strategies
Many approaches to formative assessment when transforming education exist, and here are several examples:
1. Slips for entry and exit
The few minutes before and after class can provide numerous opportunities to determine what children remember. Begin the class with a quick question regarding the prior day’s work while the students settle down. You can request differentiated questions written on a chart, paper, or on board.
Exit slips take forms beyond pencil and paper. Consider the use of tools such as Poll Everywhere or Padlet to measure progress toward the retention or attainment of essential content.
Conversely, implement standards through the use of Flubaroo, Google Forms, or Google Classroom’s Question tool to make it easy to understand what students know.
One of the best ways to see the bigger picture is to sort your papers into three divisions, including whether the students got the point, sort of understood it, or did not understand. The size of the stacks gives you a clue as to what to do next.
Regardless of the tool, the best way to maintain student engagement in the process of formative assessment is through questions. Asking students, for their learning, to write for a single minute on the most important thing they learned is helpful. Consider prompts such as:
- What is one thing you have yet to understand, two things you are curious about, and three new things you learned?
- If you were presented with the choice, how would you go about today differently?
- Today was challenging because…
- Right now, I feel as though my learning…
2. Polls and quizzes
If you need to determine whether or not students have full comprehension of the material, formative quizzes and polls are created with in-class games such as Kahoot and Quizlet. Children in many classes are always logged in with these tools, which allows the rapid completion of formative assessments.
Teachers can view every child’s formative response and determine an aggregate for how students are doing.
Because the questions can be designed yourself, you can determine the complexity level. Asking questions at the bottom provides insight into the processes, facts, and vocabulary terms that the students remember. Furthermore, consider asking more complex questions.
3. Dipsticks
There are alternative formative assessments that are meant to be as simple as checking the mileage on a vehicle, so they are often referred to as dipsticks. These can be things such as asking students to:
- Write a letter to a friend explaining an idea in a formative way
- Sketch to represent new knowledge in a visual way
- Do a shared thinking exercise with a partner
Your observations of students working in class can provide insightful data too, but they can be hard to track.
Taking quick notes on a smartphone or tablet, or utilizing a copy of the roster, is one such approach. An observation form helps narrow note-taking as you witness students’ work.
4. Interviews
Another way to dig deeper into a student’s understanding of content includes trying discussion-based assessment methods.
Casual talking to students in the classroom will make them feel at ease even when you attempt to assess what they know. Breaking interviews down into five-minute intervals works extremely well.
Spending five minutes with each student would take significant time, but you do not have to talk to the students about every lesson or project.
There are also ways to shift this effort onto the students using what is called TAG feedback. This involves telling a peer something they did well, asking thoughtful questions, and providing positive suggestions. When the students share the feedback they have for their peers, you achieve insight into their learning.
For more introverted students, consider using Seesaw or Flipgrid to have students record answers to prompts and demonstrate what can be done.
5. Methods that incorporate art
Consider using videography, photography, or visual art as a tool for assessment. When students draw, consider creating a sculpture or collage to help the students synthesize learning.
You can even go beyond visuals and have the children act out their comprehension of the content. This allows them to model mitosis or act out stories to explore the subtext.
6. Errors and misconceptions
Often, it is helpful to see if students understand the reason why concepts are hard or if something is not correct. Asking students to explain the most difficult part of a lesson, or where things got particularly difficult or confusing where they lack clarity, works well. You can also check for misconceptions.
This means presenting students with a common misunderstanding, asking them to apply their prior knowledge to correct mistakes or ask to decide if statements contain mistakes, and then discussing answers. For instance, you can use Venn diagrams to have students compare and contrast topics.
7. Self-assessment
Never forget to consult the students themselves. You can offer your rubric to students, having them identify their strengths and weaknesses. Sticky notes offer rapid insight into which areas your children think they need to work on.
Ask the kids to pick their hard paths from three to four areas in which you think the class as a whole needs to work and write these areas in separate columns on a board.
Multiple self-assessments allow teachers to view what every child thinks quickly.
For instance, consider the implementation of traffic light-colored stacking cups to demonstrate levels of their understanding.
An additional strategy includes the use of participation cards for discussions, with every student having three cards representing levels of agreement.
Moreover, the implementation of thumbs-up responses and six-hand gestures to signal whether they have something to add, disagree, or agree. Each of these strategies provides teachers with an unobtrusive way to understand what students think.
Students can even create screen-casts or short videos to explain their reasoning. You can then witness what they create, see what they can explain, what they may not understand, and what they omit.
Regardless of the tools you choose, make time for self-reflection to ensure that you only assess the content and do not get lost in the fog. If you find that a tool is too complex, is not accessible or reliable, or takes up too much time, it’s fine to put it aside and do things differently.
8. Body language
By paying close attention to student body language, they will often communicate their understanding or lack thereof. You can even prompt them to give a non-verbal yes or no. This is an exceptional student growth tracker.
9. Predictions
As an instructor, it helps to do the work you are planning to offer the students in at least two ways. Next, you anticipate the student’s responses to the work and, before offering them the work, allow them to make predictions.
When students have the opportunity to make predictions about class demos or experiments to explain their reasoning, they can discuss which predictions went right vs. wrong. If you grade the assignment, base the grade on the conclusion instead of the predictions. Record any observations on an anticipation template.
10. Group rotations
Let students collaborate in stations and rotate them throughout. In smaller groups, supervise the discussion or activity and assess the groups. Finally, provide everyone with targeted feedback that relates to the discussion.
11. Community posts
Using programs like Slack or Today’s Meet, students can discuss their thinking, state ideas, and share questions as topics are being taught.
Teachers can address questions much faster, and point out ideas that interest them, and students can develop their understanding by viewing the thoughts of their peers. This is especially beneficial for more shy students as they can voice themselves through technology.
Principles of learning assessment
According to the UK Assessment Reform Group, the 5 key principles of learning assessment include:
- The provision of effective student feedback
- Active involvement from students in their education
- Adjusting teaching to take account of the assessment results
- Recognizing the profound influence that assessment has on the self-esteem and motivation of pupils, which critically influence learning.
- The need for students to understand what they need to do to improve and assess themselves.
Formative vs. summative assessment
Formative assessment includes tools that identify gaps in learning, misconceptions, and struggles along the way to assess how said gaps can be closed. It includes effective tools necessary to help shape learning, with the added ability to bolster students’ ability to take ownership of their learning to improve, not grade it.
Conversely, summative assessments work to evaluate proficiency, learning, knowledge, or success at the end of an instructional period, such as a program, unit, or course. Summative assessments are always heavily weighted grade levels. They work in tandem with formative assessment, giving teachers ways to combine the two approaches and monitor progress.
Below are examples of formative vs. summative assessments.
Because there are usually higher stakes involved with a summative assessment tool in comparison to a formative, it is particularly important to ensure that teachers’ assessments align with the goal of the instruction.
Why formative assessment is important
Formative assessment is necessary for educators who seek to unlock in-depth information about student learning.
With the help of formative assessment strategies that expose misconceptions, support higher-level thought within various subjects, and push students to engage in academic discourse, the power of formative assessment allows real-time feedback.
Unlike traditional assessments, individualized feedback from formative assessment strategies is needed to dynamically adjust the instruction to meet the needs of student learning as they change and emerge.
In summary, formative assessment strategies help educators evaluate whether or not responsive moves work while there is time to do something about it. The teacher-paced mode represents the celebration that learning objectives are ongoing, full of periods of struggle, and stretches of success, and helps people remember that learning isn’t linear.
It is designed to reward dedication, effort, and persistence. Perhaps best of all, it helps people collaborate with student progress as co-partners in the entire experience of learning.
Well-designed courses maintain a balance between summative and formative assessments. Instructors may use formative assessments during the process in which students learn new material or check their understanding of new concepts.
The results of these assessments tell both the instructor and students whether or not the students can move on to the next material. At the moment that the instructor has determined that students have the skills and knowledge they need, he or she can then assign a summative assessment to allow them to show their new skills and knowledge.
Evidence
A meta-analysis of research into formative assessment demonstrates the significant gains in learning when it is used across every area of skill, knowledge, and education. In addition to empirical evidence, formative assessment has been recognized as one of the most powerful methods to engage students and enhance motivation.
In believing in their capacity to learn, contributing success to individual abilities and efforts, emphasizing progress towards goals instead of letter grades, and evaluating the nature of thinking to identify the strategies needed to improve understanding, all affect motivation.
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