Key takeaways
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With formative assessment, a teacher can gather evidence to guide their decision-making, rather than waiting until teaching is complete to know whether a student understands the content.
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Formative assessment methods are powerful because they are quick and easy for teachers to use. This is not a tedious or labor-intensive process that will overwhelm educators or students.
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Using formative assessment is more than gathering student responses. A teacher will need to incorporate specific feedback into their practice to ensure that changes in student understanding can occur quickly.
Assessment of student understanding is a cornerstone of the educational system. Educators can teach content and skills, but if the students do not actually learn, then nothing is gained. In the history of American public education, assessments were completed at the culmination of a unit, semester, or school year. At the point the tests were completed, the learning either happened or it did not.
The push for formative assessment is an attempt to gather information about student learning and understanding during instruction. With this approach, teachers can make adjustments to ensure that students move successfully toward mastery.
What Is Formative Assessment?
Formative assessment is a different way of thinking about testing. The emphasis is not on a numerical grade but on a low-stakes approach during the teaching cycle, in which teachers gather data to support their instructional planning and strategies.
The timing of formative assessment is ongoing and happens frequently; this provides teachers and students with opportunities to analyze their thinking before a final grade. Formative assessment methods can be qualitative or quantitative, but they should be quick to create, implement, and analyze.
It can be tempting to treat formative assessment practices as the same as checks for understanding. When a teacher plans a check for understanding in their lesson, they hope to discover what students know. Although checks for understanding can be a part of a formative assessment plan, the goal is to gain insight into student cognition.
Formative assessment is more than ensuring students know the answer; it is about creating opportunities for teachers to see patterns and trends among their students. The data collected should yield valuable insights into how students think, not just whether they have memorized an answer.
Formative Assessment vs. Summative Assessment
A formative assessment plan includes multiple opportunities to gauge student understanding throughout the learning process. With each formative assessment, a teacher can correct misunderstandings and provide immediate feedback to individual students, ensuring they provide personalized guidance when needed.
A summative assessment is a one-time test or project that is used to measure a student’s final understanding of a concept or topic. Often, this type of assessment results in a numerical or letter grade that reflects a student’s mastery. Summative assessments have an important place in education because they provide a way to measure a student’s overall grasp or performance.
Key Differences and When to Use Each
Formative assessment should be used throughout the teaching and learning process to support growth. A teacher will want to have a multitude of small formative assessments planned out daily or at least weekly. These should take a short period and be limited in their scope to allow an educator to make immediate adjustments.
Summative assessment should be used to evaluate a demonstration of understanding at the culmination of a learning unit or other complete cycle. A teacher will typically have one or two summative assessments based on the skill required. These are often measures of overall achievement or performance evaluations.
Why Is Formative Assessment Important?
The use of formative assessment is important because it allows teachers to discover what students do not know, rather than only what they do. Often, educators can learn more from incorrect or partially correct answers because they can identify where students are confused and make decisions moving forward. The use of formative assessment provides a glimpse intostudents’ thought processes, which is vital for teachers to intervene appropriately.
Benefits of Formative Assessment for Teachers and Students
There are numerous benefits to using formative assessment in the classroom.
For teachers, gathering and analyzing the data from an individual formative assessment provides an in-the-moment view of student understanding. This is important so that teachers can adjust their instruction before moving forward, preventing student misunderstandings from becoming permanent. Teachers can immediately address misconceptions through feedback or can offer interventions to support student learning.
When a teacher provides feedback from formative assessment, a student can understand where they are in their learning before a culminating project or summative assessment. In this period before the end of a unit of study, students are provided with information, time, and space to update their understanding. Along with learning content, they are practicing important executive functioning skills.
Types of Formative Assessment
When considering the use of formative assessment, a teacher should view their full unit to create an assessment plan. They can decide when, where, and how they will build individual formative assessments into their instruction. Even with a plan in place, teachers should demonstrate instructional agility to make quick decisions based on their observations during each class period.
Pre-Assessment, Self-Assessment, Peer Feedback, and Feedback Breaks
Although most formative assessment use will relate to academic growth, it can be used effectively to support student behavior, social-emotional learning, and overall well-being.
Pre-assessment is a traditional measurement technique in which teachers assess students’ understanding prior to the start of a unit. Data gathered will inform the teacher about prior knowledge and the areas where students will need the most support.
Self-assessment is a valuable tool for teachers to collect data about a student’s thought process and their perceptions of their own learning. It is also great practice for students as they develop skills that will support them throughout life.
Peer feedback can be helpful for all students involved. However, there should be prior learning and procedures in place to ensure that students understand how to provide and receive feedback. They will need clear guidelines and time to practice.
Feedback breaks should be built into teacher planning and instruction. These are the moments when a teacher plans ahead to provide feedback to individual students or a class as a whole. There will be times when an educator decides to implement an unplanned formative assessment based on their observations, but most should be strategically planned.
Formative Assessment Strategies and Examples
A teacher can conduct a quick internet search and discover hundreds of pre-existing formative assessments. However, over time they will begin to develop their own based on their classroom practices and unique students.
Exit Tickets, Think-Pair-Share, and Other Classroom Checks
When selecting a formative assessment option, a teacher should consider the method for collection and the specific data they hope to obtain.
Methods for formative assessment should be quick and usable at any point in the lesson. One example that works in any setting is a parking lot. A teacher creates a designated area in the classroom for students to place their responses; typically, students use a sticky note. Another method is think-pair-share, wherein students work individually, with a partner, and then with a larger group. At the end of a lesson, many teachers use exit tickets. These are collected as students leave the classroom.
With each of the methods mentioned above, a teacher has myriad options for addressing the content itself. One might consider asking students to craft a one-sentence summary for a read-aloud chapter. Students could be challenged to provide examples and non-examples for that day’s learning. Another effective strategy is to use inverted questioning. With this approach, a teacher makes a statement and then asks a student to explain their thinking. For example, rather than asking whether basalt is an igneous rock, a teacher could state that basalt is igneous and ask students how they could prove it.
How to Implement Formative Assessment in Your Classroom
The most effective way to implement formative assessment in a classroom is to plan ahead. A teacher will need to identify where in their instruction they will gather data, how they will collect it, and their process for analyzing the data. When first starting, a teacher can consider areas for pre-corrections based on when students typically struggle or demonstrate common misconceptions.
Aligning Assessments with Learning Objectives and Providing Feedback
It can be easy to utilize formative assessment daily; however, this should become a practice once a teacher has a clear plan. Including formative assessments but not using the data is not a productive use of teacher time. It is best to start with a few points throughout the week to gather student responses related to specific learning objectives. The process should be a quick cycle that includes student answers, teacher analysis, teacher feedback, and adjustments to instruction the next day. As confidence grows, educators will be able to organically add formative assessment throughout their instruction.
