Formative Assessment

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What we mean by assessments for learning? Formative

Assessments for learning happen while learning is still underway. These are the assessments that we conduct throughout teaching and learning to diagnose student needs, plan our next steps in instruction, provide students with feedback they can use to improve the quality of their work, and help students see and feel in control of their journey to success. Each one reveals to students increments of achievement and how to do better the next time. On these occasions, the grading function is laid aside. This is not about accountability-those are assessments of learning. This is about getting better.

Summary of Key Ideas About Formative Assessment:

Reasons for Assessing – To promote increases in achievement to help students meet more standards.  Support ongoing student growth and improvement.

Audience – The students are the main audience and are trying to learn about their own learning so far. Teachers use this assessment to know how to give feedback and help students know what to do next.

Focus of Assessment – Specific achievement targets selected by teachers that enable students to build toward standards.

Place in Time – A process built into the learning on a daily/weekly basis.

Typical Uses – To provide students with insight to improve achievement and to help teachers diagnose and respond to student needs.  To help parent see progress over time and to help parents support the learning at home.

Assessment User Assessment for Learning Purpose
Students
  1. Am I improving over time?
  2. Do I know what it means to succeed?
  3. What should I do next?
  4. What help do I need?
Teachers
  1. What does this student need?
  2. What do these students need?
  3. What are student strengths to build on?
  4. How should I group my students?
  5. Am I going too fast? Too slow? Too far? Not far enough?
Parents
  1. What can we do at home to support learning?
  2. Is my child learning new things?

Redding School District Formative Assessments: As teachers can develop many formative assessments within the scope of their daily work, this is not intended to be an exhaustive list, but merely a list of assessments that are regularly used for formative actions by teachers within the district.

  • Letter/Sound recognition
  • Phonemic Awareness Tests
  • Basic Phonics Skills Test (BPST)
  • High Frequency Words
  • Ren Place Early Literacy
  • Teacher made quizzes
  • Unit or Chapter Tests
  • Journal Writes
  • First Draft Writing w/feedback
  • Entrance or Exit Tickets

Effective Feedback after Formative Assessments are Given:

  1. Directs attention to the intended learning, pointing out strengths and offering specific information to guide improvement
  2. Occurs during learning, while there is still time to act on it.
  3. Addresses partial understanding.
  4. Does not do the thinking for the student.
  5. Limits corrective information to the amount of advice the student can act on.

We used to ….
When concluding a writing lesson, we used to have students conduct a peer review of their work with a partner. We would provide them with check lists and tell them to use these checklists, assuming that they would know what to do.  While students were giving each other feedback, we would monitor their conversations. We noticed that students simply read their writing pieces to each other and gave very few suggestions to improve their writing because they believed that was what peer review was.

Now we ….
We have begun providing strong and weak examples in many of our lessons. To introduce peer review now, we list the criteria for quality peer feedback. Then we show the students a videotape of ourselves modeling weak and strong examples of peer feedback. Including this component adds a visual model to help the students engage. As students watch the clips, they are looking for the criteria that well help them identify the strong example. After thoroughly discussing each video clip, the students apply the peer feedback criteria to their own writing pieces.

What we noticed as a result ….
First and foremost, the skills the students acquired from this activity were above and beyond our expectations. The students were engaged and focused throughout not only the videos but also during their peer feedback conferences. It was more meaningful for them to see their teachers engaged in a video that was outside of their normal routine. They took ownership of their peer review process, they followed the peer feedback model and criteria, and they took their time and allowed for corrections. They used constructive criticism and their conversations were more meaningful than in the past. We saw growth and improvement in our students’ final writing pieces as well.

Jessica Barylski, Audrey Eckert, & Robyn Eidam

Teaching Writing

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