You’ve heard about all the disadvantages of teaching to standardized tests or assessments. Some educators use the content and skills that will be on a standardized test to plan classroom instruction. It narrows instruction to only what’s on the test. Once instruction is focused on the test, the creativity and dynamism of teaching is reduced. Teaching to the test may have some disadvantages. But using tests to guide instruction isn’t all-bad. I am not talking about standardized assessment. I’m talking about formative assessment.
Formative assessment is a low risk test that teachers give during the course of instruction to see if students are gaining the skills and content knowledge outlined in the curriculum. Formative assessment can be an important tool in improving both teaching and learning. However, formative assessment is often misused in the classroom. Below, we describe formative assessment, and explore how and when to use it.
What is formative assessment?
Formative assessment is not a test. It is a process. Formative assessment is an instructional strategy in which a test is only part of the process. In this process, an educator teaches a set of skills and knowledge, as outlined in the curriculum. During the instruction process, the teacher administers a low risk assessment to see if students are mastering the skills and content knowledge being taught. An example of formative assessment is a brief quiz. The exit card (exit ticket) is a popular option. It is literally a card or post-it with two or three questions that help the teacher gauge if students are grasping the material. Teachers can also give a homework assignment, based on topics covered during instruction.
Formative assessment is not a test. It is a process.
Both teachers and students use the results of formative assessment. Teachers review the results of formative assessment to make changes in ongoing and future instruction. Students review the results of formative assessment to make adjustments to their learning approaches. As such, the results of the test are not the goal of formative assessment. The test results are a stage in the teaching and learning process.
How to use it?
Formative assessment must be based on a particular curricula aim, as all forms of assessment. The educator must thoroughly understand the curriculum. The educator must also have a clear idea about the meaning of learning outcomes, as defined by curricula aims. Learning outcomes are behaviors, skills and knowledge a student must achieve to master a curricula aim.
Formative assessment must contain test items that are based on measurable learning outcomes. Put another way, students should be able to show, or demonstrate that they understand (or don’t understand) a curricula aim through a set of behaviors, activities or expressions as defined by the curriculum. For instance, a curricula aim in math may be: Fluently add two digit numbers, using the standard algorithm. Assessment should feature carefully crafted problems that ask students to demonstrate specific learning outcomes when adding two digit numbers. Learning outcomes are (in a well thought out curriculum) those objectives in the curriculum that feature active sentences, like:
Students will be able to determine the number of tens and ones in a given number
Students should be able to use place value to … you get the idea.
You should be able to collect evidence from formative assessment. Some educators ask students to put their hands up if they understand a concept or idea. This is not formative assessment. Educators should be able to collect and review the results of formative assessment. The results of quizzes or tests become evidence of student learning and evidence of the effectiveness of instruction.
Educators collect this evidence so that they can review it for trends about gaps in knowledge, levels of understanding, common errors etc. Educators use these trends to adjust ongoing and/or future instruction.
Some educators ask students to put their hands up if they understand a concept or idea. This is not formative assessment.
Students must be able to review the results of formative assessment to understand the errors they made, find gaps in knowledge, etc. Students use the results of formative assessment to adjust learning approaches in the future. For example, a student may realize that she memorized a formula incorrectly. Or that she missed some steps in a standard addition algorithm. This works best when the teacher provides time and space for students to review their own work to see where they veered in the wrong direction.
When to use it?
Formative assessment must be planned. As such, instruction must be somewhat planned in advance and the teacher must know when formative assessments will occur. I say somewhat planned because if you teach according to your plan and students are not grasping the material, you must be prepared to abandon your plan and adjust instruction to improve student learning.
Formative assessment should be used at key steps during the instructional process. When teaching a curricula aim, a teacher breaks complex skills and knowledge into smaller sub-skills and knowledge or building blocks. These building blocks occur in a particular sequence or order. The sequence is based on the idea that students must understand A, before moving on to B, and must understand B before moving on to C and so on. There are lots of fancy names for the ordered sequence of knowledge and sub-skills that students learn on their way to mastering complex curricular aims. Learning progressions. Scaffold Learning. I’m sure you know others.
Formative assessment should occur at key or important steps in a learning progression. These key steps are often the most important concepts or skills needed to master a particular curricular aim. For example, students may be learning how to write argumentative essays. An educator may construct a formative assessment that asks students to write an introductory paragraph that states the two main arguments that will be discussed in the rest of the essay. To learn place value, an educator may construct a formative assessment that asks students to group quantities to determine the number of tens and ones.
Textbooks on methods and instructional strategies offer guidelines about the sequence of steps that a teacher should take to teach a particular curricula aim. These guidelines can be useful but take them with a grain of salt. Why? The sequence of learning depends on too many factors. What do students already know? What kinds of learners are in your classroom? How much time does the teacher have to teach the curriculum? I could go on and on. Each teacher should determine the best time to administer formative assessment for his/her class. This is an art that comes with time through experience and common sense.
I’d love to hear how you use formative assessment in your classroom. #heidiholder #redloheducation Please share your experiences in the comments below.
