Formative Assessment

This week’s article summary is  Misconceptions About Formative Assessment

As a teacher I made every every mistake a teacher could with respect to assessment: I graded homework, I gave surprise quizzes on previous night’s homework, I graded classroom participation.

In my naiveté, I thought by  grading almost everything that occurred in class, I was accurately ‘quantifying’ a student’s performance, growth, and understanding. 

When it came time for progress reports and quarter or semester grades, I had a ton of data, but I obviously missed the bigger point of my job: how was I helping kids to learn and fostering in them continued engagement in and excitement of learning and school.

Last week’s article summary was advice from Grant Wiggins who was a proponent of ensuring assessment focuses on both achievement (more objective) and progress (more subjective). He liked to use ‘running’ as an example. I may be a slow runner (from an objective standpoint) but over time I might improve the time it takes me to run a mile (from my personal, subjective standpoint). 

One of our focus areas for our SAIS accreditation Self-Study is ‘how are we empowering kids in their learning.' Providing ample opportunities for formative assessment is essential to helping kids learn to be more reflective and evaluative of their learning—to assess where they are, what they know and don’t, and what strategies they will employ to reach their goal (both in terms of achievement and progress). 

Back when I was more of a data collector, I wasn’t empowering my student, even though I thought I was. 

Take note of the example at the end of the article about high school English class where the teacher is giving voice and power and decision-making to her students. 

Joe

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Here are three common misconceptions about formative assessment.

That annual standardized tests improve teaching and learning (only formative assessments have the potential to do that).

That formative assessment is an event (it’s actually a day-to-day process to give students and teachers a stream of information for next steps in learning)

That assessment results often discourage students (Good formative assessment keeps students believing that success is within reach if they keep trying).

Ideally, formative assessments do three things: (a) clarify the learning target for students; (b) tell them where they are with respect to the target; and (c) provide insights on how they can close the gap. “Do you see where the locus of control resides? It’s with the student.”

Should formative assessments be graded? Students’ progress should be monitored and shared with them, using clear performance criteria and student-friendly feedback. Sometimes formative assessments provide more-accurate information on students’ skills, knowledge, and understanding than formal assessments.

I caution against grading day-to-day checks for understanding: My admonition is that while learning is going on and we’re diagnosing and providing good feedback, the grade book remains closed.

Here is an example from a high-school English teacher working with her students to establish criteria for a term paper they’d just been assigned. First, she gave students a copy of an exemplary term paper, had them identify what made it so effective, and had them synthesize the characteristics. Then she passed out a poorly written paper and went through a similar exercise. “OK,” she said, “let’s talk about the differences between these two papers. What was it about the good paper that differentiates it from the bad paper?” This discussion, and small-group work that followed, produced a consolidated range of quality on several essential criteria they should be aiming toward in their own papers – their own rubric!