Here is how you can get a better understanding of FORMATIVE

ASSESSMENTS

Formative assessment: Designed to give students feedback on their

progress towards the development of knowledge, understanding, skills
and attitudes rather than assessment for marks or grades, which are
not given to students.

Formative Assessment: is a form of assessment intended to give

students feedback on their learning progress and to give the teacher
an indication of what students have mastered and areas of difficulty.
Formative assessment is not used to assign marks or grades toward
determining whether the student gains credit for the module.

Formative assessments help monitor the progress of learning and the

acquisition of learning outcomes during instruction; its purpose is to
provide continuous feedback to both students and teachers on learning
successes and failures.

Another distinction that underpins formative assessment is student

involvement. If students are not involved in the assessment process,
formative assessment is not practiced or implemented to its full
effectiveness. Students need to be involved both as assessors of their
own learning and as resources to other students. There are numerous
strategies teachers can implement to engage students. In fact,
research shows that the involvement in and ownership of their work
increases students' motivation to learn. This does not mean the
absence of teacher involvement. To the contrary, teachers are critical
in identifying learning goals, setting clear criteria for success, and
designing assessment tasks that provide evidence of student learning.

One of the key components of engaging students in the assessment of

their own learning is providing them with descriptive feedback as they
learn. In fact, research shows descriptive feedback to be the most
significant instructional strategy to move students forward in their
learning. Descriptive feedback provides students with an
understanding of what they are doing well, links to classroom learning,
and gives specific input on how to reach the next step in the learning
progression. In other words, descriptive feedback is not a grade, a
sticker, or "good job!" A significant body of research indicates that such
limited feedback does not lead to improved student learning.

Assessment of Learning and Assessment for Learning

Notes from Chapter 3 of Ahead of the Curve
• Page 60, “First, we must assess accurately. I will describe
exactly what this means. Second, we must use the
 assessment process and its results productively: to keep
students believing in themselves as capable learners who
make sound decisions tat will lead them to greater levels of
achievement.
• Page 61, The Keys to Assessment Quality
1. Start with a clear purpose for assessment – a sense of why
we are assessing.
2. Include a clear achievement target – a vision of what we
need to assess
3. Design an assessment that accurately reflects the target
and satisfies the purpose
4. Communicate results effectively to the intended users
• Page 70, “But what is we supplement it with assessment for
learning by asking, ‘How can we use the assessment process
to cause students to learn more; that is, to increase
achievement in the future?’”
• Page 70, “If assessments of learning check to see if our
students are meeting standards (state, district, or classroom),
assessments for learning ask if our students are making
progress toward meeting those standards (day to day in the
classroom – during the learning). One is for accountability,
while the other is used to support learning.”
• Page 71, “Assessments for learning occur while the learning is
still happening and throughout the learning process. So early
in the learning, students’ scores will not be high. This is not
failure – it simply represents where students are not in their
ongoing journey to ultimate success.”
• Page 71 and 72, The teacher’s role in assessment of learning
is as it always has been: to administer accurate assessments
and use sound grading practices. But in assessment for
learning, this role changes. The teacher’s role in this case is
to carry out the following sequence:
1. Become confident, competent master of the standard our
students are expected to master
2. Deconstruct each standard into the enabling classroom
achievement targets that form the scaffolding leading up
to the standard
3. Create a student-friendly version of those targets to share
with students from the beginning of the learning
4. Create high-quality classroom assessments that reflect
those targets
5. Use those assessments (in collaboration with students) to
track improvement over time
• Page 72, “The student’s role in assessment of learning is as it
always has been: to study hard and strive for the highest
 scores and grades; that is, demonstrate competence. But in
assessment for learning, the student’s role is to strive to
understand what success looks like and to use each
assessment to try to understand how to do better the next
time. In other words, students seek to understand what good
writing looks like so they can assess where they are currently
and then close the gap between the two.”
• Page 73, “The Black and William synthesis instructs us that
the keys to maximizing these gains are to increase:
1. The accuracy of classroom assessments
2. Student access to descriptive (versus judgmental)
feedback
3. Student involvement in assessment, record-keeping, and
communication

Content Then Process:

Teacher Learning Communities in the Service of Formative
Assessment
Notes from Chapter 9 of Ahead of the Curve

• Page 183 – “Raising student achievement is important, but

not for the reasons many educators think. Forget No Child
Left Behind and adequate yearly progress. Forget district and
state reports that rank schools by proportion of proficient
students. Raising achievement is important because it
matters for individuals and society. If you achieve at a higher
level, you live longer, are healthier, and earn money.”
• Page 184 – “First generation thought that schools made a
difference. Second generation found that most of the schools
getting good results were in affluent areas, and most of the
schools with low student achievement were in areas of
poverty. Third generation found that it does not matter very
much which school students attend. What matters very much
is which classrooms they are in in that school. Students on
the most effective classrooms learn at four times the speed of
those in the least effective classrooms.”
• Page 191, “If students have left the classroom before teachers
have made adjustments to their teaching on the basis of what
they have learned about students’ achievement, then they
are already playing catch-up. If teachers do not make
adjustments before students come back the next day, it is
probably too late. This is why the most important formative
assessments are those that occur minute-by-minute and day-
by-day.”
• Page 191, “Students and teachers, using evidence of learning,
to adapt teaching and learning, to meet immediate learning
needs, minute-by-minute and day-by-day”
• The Effective Formative Assessments consists of Five Key
Strategies
1. Clarifying learning intentions and sharing criteria for
success
2. Engineering effective classroom discussions, questions,
and learning tasks that elicit evident of learning
3. Providing feedback that moves learners forward
4. Activating students as the owners of their own learning
5. Activating students instructional resources for one another
• Page 196, “Teachers learn most of what the know about
teaching before they are 18 years old. In the same way that
most of us learn what we know about parenting through being
parented, teachers have internalized the ‘script’ of school
from when they themselves were students.”
• Page 199, “Teaching is a highly personal activity, and choice
in implementing formative assessment is essential if teachers
are to integrate it into their practice.”
• Page 200, “The research shows that it is what teachers do in
the classroom that really matters – not having teachers meet
in workshops to talk about how to assess student work or
what students’ scores on test mean for the curriculum.”
• Page 200, “So if we are serious about raising student
achievement, we must focus on helping teachers change what
they do in the classroom.”