FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT (Assessment for learning)

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FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT
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(Assessment for
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Improving Student Achievement
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Complied by Frederick L Smeigh PhD
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HYPERLINK TO CONTENT
What is Formative Assessment?
Formative Assessment and Standards Based Systems
Why use?
Assessment SEQUENCE
PREASSESSMENT
CLASSROOM MONITORING DURING UNIT
FEEDBACK
SELF and PEER ASSESSMENT
WEB RESOURCES
REFERENCES
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WHAT IS FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT?
The following definition of formative assessment was adopted by the Council of Chief State
School Officers. The definition was developed by the Formative Assessment Advisory Group
and the State Collaborative on Assessment and Student Standards and can be found in a paper on
the attributes of formative assessment prepared for the Council of Chief State School Officers.
Formative assessment is a process used by teachers and students during
instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning to
improve student’s achievement of intended instructional outcomes.
The above definition requires the following:
‣ Formative assessment is not an adjunct to teaching but, rather, integrated into
instruction and learning with teachers and students receiving frequent feedback.
‣ Formative Assessment is a process rather than a particular type of assessment.
There is no such thing as a formative test; there are formative assessment
strategies that can be implemented during classroom instruction..
‣ Formative assessment occurs constantly in the classroom.
There are five attributes that have been identified to effectively implement the above
definition. All of the following attributes need not be present for the assessment to be
formative.
1. Learning progressions describe how concepts and skills build in a domain, and
show the trajectory of learning along which students are expected to progress.
2. Learning goals should be identified and communicated to the students along with
the criteria by which learning will be assessed.
3. Students should be provided with evidenced-based descriptive feedback that is
linked to the intended instructional outcomes and criteria for success.
4. Formative assessment is a process that directly engages both teachers and
students. Both self and peer assessment are important for providing students an
opportunity to think meta-cognitively about their learning.
5. A classroom culture in which teachers and students are partners in learning should
be established. Teachers need to support students as they monitor and take
responsibility for their own learning by:
helping students provide constructive feedback to each other,
involving students in decisions about how to move learning forward (McManus,
2008)
Pennsylvania defines formative assessment as classroom based assessment that allows
teachers to monitor and adjust their instructional practice in order to meet the individual
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needs of their students. Formative assessment can consist of formal instruments or
informal observations.
The key is how the results are used. Results should be used to shape teaching and
learning. Black and William (1998) define formative assessment broadly to include
instructional formats that teachers utilize in order to get information that when used
diagnostically alter instructional practices and have a direct impact on student learning
and achievement. Under this definition, formative assessment encompasses questioning
strategies, active engagement check-ins, (such as response cards, white boards, random
selection, think-pair-share, popsicle sticks for open-ended questions, and numbered
heads) and analysis of student work based on set rubrics and standards including
homework and tests.
Assessments are formative when the information is used to adapt instructional practices
to meet individual student needs as well as providing individual students corrective
feedback that allows them to “reach” set goals and targets. Ongoing formative assessment
is an integral part of effective instructional routines that provide teachers with the
information they need to differentiate and make adjustments to instructional practice in
order to meet the needs of individual students.
When teachers know how students are progressing and where they are having trouble, they can
use this information to make necessary instructional adjustments, such as re-teaching, trying
alternative instructional approaches, or offering more opportunities for practice. The use of
ongoing formative classroom assessment data is an imperative. Effective teachers seamlessly
integrate formative assessment strategies into their daily instructional routines.
SUPPORTING DEFINITIONS
Elwood, & Klendowski (2002) believe there is a distinction between “assessment of learning”
(assessment for the purposes of grading and reporting with its own established procedures) and
“assessment for learning” (assessment whose purpose is to enable students, through effective
feedback, to fully understand their own learning and the goals they are aiming for). Assessment
for learning requires teachers to never take a student’s grade in and of itself as the only central
goal of the assessment. Rather, assessment performance is taken as a proxy for the student’s
status with respect to target instructional domain (Popham, 2002).
Formative assessment refers to assessment that is specifically designed to generate feedback to
improve and accelerate student learning (Sadler, 1998)
Formative assessment is defined as assessment carried out during the instructional process for
the purpose of improving teaching or learning. To be effective, teachers must be skillful in using
various assessment strategies and tools such as observation, student conferences, portfolios,
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performance tasks, prior knowledge assessments, rubrics, feedback, and student self-assessment.
More importantly, they must have a deep understanding of the formative assessment process and
understand its close relationship to instructional scaffolding (Shepard, Hammerness, Darling-
Hammond, & Rust, 2005).
Formative assessment occurs when you feed information back to the student in ways that enable
the students to learn better or when students engage in a similar self-reflective process. (National
Center for Fair and Open Testing 2007)
Many researchers have identified what constitutes formative assessment. (Black & William,
1998; Sadler, 1998b; Stiggins, 2007; Heritage, 2007a) The strategies are listed below:
1. Preassessing students.
2. Sharing learning goals with students.
3. Employing quality classroom discourse and questioning.
4. Using rich and challenging tasks that elicit students’ responses.
5. Identifying the gap between where the students are now and the desired standard goal.
6. Providing feedback that helps students identify how to improve.
7. Using self-assessment and peer assessment.
8. Providing students with opportunities to close the gap between current and desired
performance.
9. Celebrating learning progress.
FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT CYCLE
LEARNING PROGRESSIONS
Determine goals and
define creteria for success
Student (s) use
feedback to
improve
learning
Analyze Data
Diagnose
Problem
Scaffold
Learning
Identify Gap
Provide clear
specific
feedback
Plan Learning
and
Instructioanal
Modifications
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Assessment becomes formative when the information is used to adapt teaching and learning to
meet student needs. When teachers know how students are progressing and where they are
having trouble, they can use this information to make necessary instructional adjustments, such
as reteaching, trying alternative instructional approaches, or offering more opportunities for
practice. These activities can lead to improved student success. (Black & William, 1998)
Formative assessment involves providing feedback to students and closing the gap between the
learners’s current and desired state (Heritage, 2007).
Formative Assessment and Standards Based
Systems
Formative assessment and standards-based education share many common characteristics.
Curriculum and instruction are based on standards not on a textbook and assessment is used to
determine student progress on the standards. Formative assessment should be designed to
determine the student’s immediate progress in mastering the standard(s) being addressed.
When you use formative assessment you identify the present status of the students in terms of the
learning standard, diagnose what to do to assist them, provide feedback, allow students to make
the changes, and recognize their progress.
Teachers are better able to determine what standards students already know and to what degree,
decide what changes in instruction to make so that all students can succeed, chose appropriate
instructional strategies and activities, choose appropriate groupings, and keep students informed
of their progress when to use formative assessment.
Standards that are being addressed by the course must be posted in the classroom by unit.
Why use?
State tests, course finals, quarterly benchmarks, and unit tests are important because they
summarize students’ past learning; however, they do not help the students improve on a regular
weekly basis as classroom formative assessments do (Tuttle, 2009).
Teachers generally need to undertake or participate in some summative assessment as a basis for
reporting grades or meeting accountability standards. However, the task of summative
assessment for external purposes remains quite different from the task of formative assessment to
monitor and improve progress. While state tests provide a snapshot of a student's performance on
a given day under test conditions, formative assessments supply the evidence teachers need in
order to adjust instructional practices so that student learning is always the outcome (Popham,
2008).
When teachers use formative assessment, students can learn in six to seven months what will
normally take a school year to learn. (Leahy, Lyon, Thompson & William 2005).
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Formative feedback is the single most powerful single
moderator in the enhancement of achievement (Hattie
1998).
Those schools where teachers use preassessment to support
targeted teaching have high achievement rates (Stronge,
2002).
Two experimental research studies have shown that
students who understand the learning objectives and
assessment criteria and have opportunities to reflect on
their work show greater improvement than those who do
not. (Fontana & Fernandes, 1994; Frederiksen & White,
1997).
Research indicates that
formative assessment works
extremely well with
disadvantaged students (Black
& William, Inside the black
box: Raising standards through
classroom assessment, 1998).
A review of 250 journal articles, which looked at the effects of formative assessment on students
ranging in age from primary to university undergraduates, found high effect sizes for formative
assessment. Typical effect sizes of the formative assessment experiments were between 0.4 and
0.7. These effect sizes are larger than most of those found for educational interventions. As an
example, an effect size of 0.7 would mean the average student who benefited from formative
assessment would achieve a score .70 standard deviations higher than an average student who
did not receive the benefits of formative assessment. A .70 standard deviation growth equates to
an approximate 25 percentile gain on a standardized test (Black & William, Inside the black box:
Raising standards through classroom assessment, 1998).
Assessment SEQUENCE
Preassessment
During Class
Assessment
Posttest
Because the goal of formative assessment focuses on improving student learning in the specified
learning goal, the first step involves eliciting student responses to reveal student thinking. The
teacher needs constant feedback on what the students do and do not know (Black & William,
1998; Stronge, 2002).
The following graph represents the percentage of assessments that should be done at different
parts of the unit. (Tuttle, 2007)
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100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Pretest
Assessments
Formative Assessment During
Unit
Posttest
PRE-ASSESSMENT
Students should take the pre-assessment in sufficient time before the unit to enable the teacher to
have adequate planning time to modify the instructional plan if needed.
Pretests do not have to be complex but they should address the unit standards at the expected
level of thinking skills (Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy) required.
Recording the results on a spreadsheet makes it easy to see the class’s strengths and learning
gaps as well as individual student results. Teachers can then plan on strategies to close the
learning gap and enrichment activities for those who are close to mastering the standards.
Pretests should also be given at the beginning of the course to address the courses key concepts
and competencies required to master the course standards.
Formative Assessment during the Learning Process
Formative assessment is tightly linked with instructional practices. Teachers need to consider
how their classroom activities, assignments, and tests support learning objectives and allow
students to communicate what they know and then use this information to improve teaching and
learning.
Formative assessment is integrated within each instructional activity. This integration requires a
diversification of the means of assessment. Assessment methods include direct teacher
observation, exchanges among students at various points in the instructional activity, and wholeclass
discussions that enable students to present different ways of understanding a task (Allal &
Lopez, 2005).
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How to find evidence of what the student (s) know and do not know during the unit? How does
the teacher get a signal of what students are learning?
Think of student thinking as an iceberg, a little bit of student learning is visible above the surface
but the vast majority of their learning is below and often well below the surface (Butler and
Munn, 2006).. How does the teacher see the bottom of the
iceberg during instruction?
When you monitor or observe students, you are looking at
what learners do in three areas Butler and Munn, 2006; Hall
and Burke, 2003).
What students say?
What students do (their actions)?
What students produce
The teacher can elicit information from students using the
following processes (Heritage, 2007)
1. Curriculum-embedded assessments that students do on a regular scheduled basis such as
weekly log, regular homework assignments, etc.
2. Teacher structured and planned interactions or activities that will elicit student thinking
during the class.
3. Spontaneous interaction that take place during the course of the lesson as the teacher
listens to group discussion, student questions, etc.
CLASSROOM MONITORING DURING UNIT
The teacher needs to
send out learning
probes, just as NASA
sends out probes to
collect information on
the workings of the
universe (Tuttle, H.
2009).
If teachers use formative assessments to drive instruction, there needs to be identified stopping
points within the lesson to determine to what degree information taught has been learned and
what to do if the students did not understand what was taught. At these points teachers use
different strategies to determine how well students have learned the information taught thus far.
Information gleaned at this time is used by teachers and students to decide what to do next. Time
for teacher and student reflection is important in this process (Popham, 2008)
QUESTIONING
The most common method of soliciting information from students during class is questioning.
Questions are valuable only when students respond! The response can be correct or incorrect but
their response can encourage student engagement and discussion and can demonstrate
understanding or misconceptions (Stronge, 2002).
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Madeline Hunter (1982) originated a process called “checking for understanding” and indicated
three common types of ineffective questions:
1. Asking a question where student silence is interpreted as meaning they understand.
2. “You all understand, don’t you?” or “You don’t have any questions do you?” Few
students are willing to admit in front of their classmates that they do not understand.
Many students work hard at trying to keep their teacher from finding out that they do not
understand.
3. “Now does anyone have a question?” Too often such question caries the implication that
if you do have a question, you obviously were not listening or you are not very bright.
The teacher can increase how much they can see of student thinking through classroom
discussion by asking open-ended questions (questions that require extended answers) as opposed
to closed-ended questions (factual, one word answers). See below:
CLOSED-ENDED VERSUS OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS
Closed-ended questions like:
When did…?
Who invented…?
What are the five steps…?
Where is…?
Which is bigger…?
Open-ended questions like:
How do you explain…?
How well did they succeed…?
Why did this reaction happen…?
What might happen next…?
What do you think?
What are some possible solutions to …?
Which may be a better beginning?
An example of a closed-end question reframed into an open-ended question is the transformation
of a recall question “Which drugs are bad for you?” to “All drugs are bad for you. Do you agree
or disagree and why?’ (Clarke, 2005)
Pauses in the classroom discussion often lead to higher level answers as students have more time
to process the information. When students are given wait-time of three seconds to think before
the answer, they answer more often and answer in more complex thoughts (Popham, 2008)
(Stronge, 2002). Marzano (2007) says wait time can be extended to five seconds after a student
answer and a teacher response when the teacher wishes to probe for additional information.
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ELICIT RESPONSES FROM CLASS DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Lipton and Wellman (1998) offer suggestions for making questions more meaningful.
Invitation to think, which consists of the teacher’s use of:
Having an approachable voice. Teacher should raise their voice at the end of the
question to indicate a question.
Using plural form. Ask “what are some reasons for…? Instead of “what is the reason
for…?” Plural forms indicate there are multiple answers to the question,
Using exploratory language. Use might, some, and could i.e. what might the cause be of
or what are some possible explanations for? This indicates numerous answers.
Using open-ended forms. Use question words and phrases like how, and what are some
other, which encourage students to extend their thinking.
Starting with positive preliminary statements. Ask “As you examine the data table, what
are some of the details you are noticing?” Or, “Reflect for a minute on the following--
and compare your thinking today to your thinking about this topic last week. What are
some similarities and differences that are emerging?”
Avoiding starters like –Have you, Can you, Did you, or Who knows.
Cognition. Select thinking verbs that represent Bloom’s level of thinking that you expect of the
students such as create (synthesize, design, formulate, hypothesize,) or evaluation (recommend,
prioritize, argue, accept/reject, justify). Teachers should use these verbs in their questions and
statements.
Topic: Have a topic which invites diverse thinking and multiple perspectives. For example, the
teacher may have her students investigate the exploration of Mexico from the viewpoint of the
Spanish government, the Catholic Church, the conquistadors, and the native Mexican people.
SAMPLE ACTIVITIES
Teacher Questioning
Class Discussion
Oral Presentation
Story/Event Retelling
Think-Pair-Share
Small Group Talk
Game Playing
Play/Drama
Panel Discussion
Think Alouds
Read Alouds
Simulations
Demonstrations
Role Playing
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Reenactment
Interviews
Thumbs-up
Random Reporter
Lab
Graphic Organizers
Exit Tickets
Response Cards
WHAT STUDENTS PRODUCE
Teachers can also monitor student learning through what they produce in class. When teachers
have students do projects requiring higher level thinking skills the teacher has a greater insight
into their mastery of the standard(s).
Students respond better to authentic tasks that duplicate real life experiences in the classroom.
The tasks should have a degree of complexity that involves numerous related skills (Tuttle,
2009).
Examples of formative assessment tasks students may be assigned to elicit information about
where they are in the learning process are listed below.
Homework Project Think-Pair-Share
Essay Poem KWL
Concept Map Drawing Summarization of main ideas
Portfolio Letter Webcast
Journal Note Podcast
Poster
Model
Brief in class writing
assignments
Summary
Report
Power-point
Webcast
Poster
Podcast
Black and Wiliam (1998b) encourage teachers to use questioning and classroom discussion as an
opportunity to increase their students' knowledge and improve understanding. They caution,
however, that teachers need to make sure to ask thoughtful, reflective questions rather than
simple, factual ones and then give students adequate time to respond. In order to involve
everyone, they suggest strategies such as the following:
Invite students to discuss their thinking about a question or topic in pairs or small groups,
and then ask a representative to share the thinking with the larger group (sometimes
called think-pair-share).
Present several possible answers to a question, then ask students to vote on them.
Ask all students to write down an answer, and then read a selected few out loud.
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Teachers might also assess students' understanding in the following ways:
Have students write their understanding of vocabulary or concepts before and after
instruction.
Ask students to summarize the main ideas they've taken away from a lecture, discussion,
or assigned reading.
Have students complete a few problems or questions at the end of instruction and check
answers.
Interview students individually or in groups about their thinking as they solve problems.
Assign brief, in-class writing assignments (e.g., "Why is this person or event
representative of this time period in history?)
Additional sample strategies that teachers can use to gain information about how well their
students are learning are listed below.
White boards: Teachers ask students to respond to questions by writing the answer on the
boards. In addition, teachers could pose a multiple choice question and students write their
choice on the board.
Letter-cards: Each student is given a set of cards ranging from A-D, T, and F. The teacher poses
a question and students choose their answer and show the appropriate card. True/False questions
are also posed.
Talk-Time: The teacher poses a question and students answer it in pairs. The teacher walks
around the class as students are talking and gleans information this way.
Summarizing strategies: There many summarizing strategies that teachers can use to assess
student understanding within a lesson (Popham, 2008)
In addition to these classroom techniques, tests and homework can be used formatively if
teachers analyze where students are in their learning and provide specific, focused feedback
regarding performance and ways to improve it. Black and Wiliam (1998, Inside the Black Box)
make the following recommendations:
‣ Frequent short tests are better than infrequent long ones.
‣ New learning should be tested within about a week of first exposure.
‣ Be mindful of the quality of test items and work with other teachers and outside sources
to collect good ones
RECORD OBSERVATIONS
Teachers may record the data collected through formative assessment several times during the
unit so they can observe patterns in student progress towards mastering the standard(s). There are
many ways for teachers to record their observations from paper and pencil to technology based
(spreadsheets, data bases) so they can look for patterns in their students’ learning.
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FEEDBACK
WHY USE FEEDBACK
Formative feedback is “the most powerful single moderator in the enhancement of achievement”
(Hattie & Jaeger, 1998).
Feedback is formative if it leads to improved student learning (Black & William, Assessment
and classroom learning, 1998) (Wiggins, 1998).
Assessment is formative if the learners can tell specifically from the feedback what they have
done well and what they could do next time to improve (Tomlinson & McTighe, 2006).
Effective feedback prevents students from reinforcing the same error and prevents the error from
becoming part of the students’ procedural or declarative knowledge base (Willis, 2006).
Hunter (1982) compares errors in student learning that is not correct to wet cement; once the
error is set in the student’s mind it can have a long lasting negative effect on student learning.
FEEDBACK PROCESS
Analyze
Information
Collected
Diagnose
Solution
Provide Clear
Specific
Feedback
The teacher’s academic and pedagogical skills are crucial to the effectiveness of formative
assessment. When the teacher can establish what the gap is between the current and desired
learning of the standard they are better prepared to give meaningful feedback designed to move
students in the right direction (Heritage, 2007).
In a standards based system the analysis of information and diagnoses of solutions is based upon
the specific Pennsylvania standards being taught. The formative assessment process is predicated
on maintaining a laser-like focus on the course standards. The teacher is to decipher the gaps in
the students’ learning of the standards. The more the teacher knows about their course’s
standards based concepts and competencies, the better they will diagnose the weak points in
students’ learning of the standards.
The Maryland Department of Education (2002) offered recommendations to teachers on one
method to improve feedback to students which has been paraphrased below:
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The teacher must begin with the end in mind, often referred to as backward design. Before
beginning the unit the teacher should:
‣ target the standards and clarify their meaning for the student
‣ create a comprehensive list of concepts and competencies from the standards and
essential questions
‣ define the data collection methods throughout a unit of study
‣ determine how you will analyze and diagnose student response
Once the assignment is completed, the teacher should provide descriptive feedback and plan for
re-teaching based on who “got it” and who didn’t. The teacher will know who got it and who
didn’t by using rubrics linked to the concepts and competencies that were targeted.
Students may not be proficient in their learning for numerous pedagogical reasons (Stiggins,
2007).
Some reasons are:
Students may not have a clear vision of the standards.
Students may not be clear on the quality expected of them.
Students may not have been focused on the learning tasks.
Students may not have sufficient background knowledge.
Students may not have had sufficient guided practice
Students may require an exemplar.
Students may need a visual approach i.e. graphic organizer
Students may need a scaffolded approach to learning the standard
Students may lack the prerequisite skills for the present learning standard
Student learning may be affected by common misconceptions, either conceptual,
( conflicts from preconceived notions that are incorrect i.e. believing space and time
is two dimensional) vocabulary (misunderstanding of the meaning of key vocabulary)
or factual (rivers always flow north, objects of different weights fall at different
speeds, lighting never strikes twice in the same place).
After diagnosing the student’s learning problem, the teacher needs to develop effective strategies
for moving the student forward.
Tunstall and Gipps (1996) indicate that students prefer descriptive feedback (what the student is
either doing or saying) as opposed to evaluative feedback (judging the standards-based learning)
because evaluative feedback often comes across as a put-down.
Feedback can be teacher-directed or focused on the students’ own suggestions for improvement
(Hall & Burke, 2003).
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All constructive feedback generally have the same characteristics (Black & William, Inside the
black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment, 1998; Heritage, 2007; Stiggins, An
introduction to student-involved assessment for learniing (5th ed.) , 2007).
‣ It is standards specific; it relates the student’s work specificly to the standards-based
performance task and avoids non-task related statements.
‣ It focuses on the critical aspects of learning by concentrating on no more than two to
three critical feedback points at a time. Students often shut down emotionally if they hear
too much feedback at once.
‣ It has a descriptive, not evaluative tone.
‣ It is immediate or at least timely. The longer the delay, the less meaningful the
feedback.
‣ It is clear and direct by succinctly communicating the strength or the gap in student
learning.
‣ It provides concrete suggestions for improvement.
‣ It is realistic; suggests small manageable change rather than a large complex one that
may cause students to shut down.
‣ It is ongoing; the more feedback the teacher provides, the better they understand what
they need to do to improve.
‣ It allows for students own feedback.
‣ It aids students in developing a commitment to change.
DELIVERING FEEDBACK – SOME SUGGESTIONS
‣ Accept the student’s difficulty with the standard may not be their fault and let them know
that you sincerely want to help them.
‣ Deliver feedback in a caring and nurturing tone or at least a neutral tone.
‣ Use statements designed to focus the student on their specific learning problems.
‣ Use various methods to constantly remind students of the rigor required in learning this
standard i.e. what would success look like with the required learning?
‣ Paraphrase students’ responses to help them clarify their thinking.
‣ Scaffold the students’ learning as appropriate.
FEEDBACK CATEGORIES
WRITTEN
FEEDBACK
ADVANTAGES
Can be referred to
frequently
ORAL FEEDBACK NONVERBAL TECHNOLOGY
Is spontaneous
Can promote a
Spontaneous and
neutral
Often spontaneous
Often a record of
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There is a record
Is a more deliberate
response because it is
not spontaneous
Some students prefer
written responses
DISADVANTAGES
Handwriting must be
legible.
Takes more time.
Students may not
understand the
feedback.
Hawk and Hill (2001)
dialogue between
student and teacher.
Some students prefer
oral feedback
Easy to forget
No record of feedback
Students may not
understand the
feedback
Easy to understand
Is silent so that others
do not hear it
Some students prefer
nonverbal feedback
Easy to forget
No record
Students may not
understand the
feedback
May work better
when requiring lower
level thinking
feedback
Teachers and students
need ready access to
technology
SELF and PEER ASSESSMENT
In addition to teacher feedback, when students and their peers are involved in the formative
assessment process there are many more opportunities to share and receive feedback.
Students can play an important role in their learning through self assessment and peer
assignment. Two experimental studies using experimental and control groups have provided
evidence that students who understand the learning objectives and assessment criteria and have
opportunities to reflect on their work, show greater improvement in learning than those students
who do not (Fontana & Fernandes, 1994; Frederiksen & White, 1997
Students with learning disabilities who are taught to use self-monitoring strategies related to their
understanding of reading and writing tasks also show performance gains (McCurdy & Shapiro,
1992; Sawyer, Graham, & Harris, 1992).
Teachers helping students to provide constructive feedback to each other, and involving students
in decisions about how to move learning forward are illustrations of students and teachers
working together in the teaching and learning process.
Students can develop the competency to meta-cognate and to offer themselves feedback if
properly trained in meta-cognition. Helping students to think meta-cognitively about their own
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learning fosters the idea that learning is their responsibility and that they can take an active role
in planning, monitoring, and evaluating their own progress.
In peer assessment, students analyze each others’ work using guidelines or rubrics and provide
descriptive feedback that supports continued improvement. Give students a checklist or rubric
and ask them to evaluate the work of another student. The checklist or rubric has to be able to be
clearly understood and contain objective statements that can easily be observed and measured.
Forming students into cooperative learning groups and giving them problems to solve and while
students work collaboratively the teacher circulates among the groups listing to student as they
attempt to find a solution to the problem. This will provide the teacher with feedback on students
understanding of the concepts and competencies being learned.
Groups can also keep a cumulative log of the groups’ progress each day by reporting on each
learning task, to provide evidence of their progress on the standards-based learning task. They
would also indicate any problems they have encountered. Logs can be paper or electronic.
Think-Pair-Share is an excellent exercise for student to student feedback. Students can share
excellent strategies with each other and provide feedback to each other on how to improve their
learning.
Students can be encouraged to be self-reflective by thinking about their own work based on what
they learned from giving feedback to other students.
Providing feedback to a peer can help deepen the student’s own learning.
Students need time to reflect on the feedback they have received to make changes or
improvements!
A teacher needs to have modeled good feedback with students about what acceptable and
unacceptable comments look like in order to create a safe learning environment.
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WEB RESOURCES
PDE Formative Assessment
Instruction PDE Video
Assessment Resource Banks in English, Mathematics, and Science
Focused Feedback: Maryland Dept. of Ed. pdf
Formative and Summative Assessment in the Classroom
Secondary Assessment - Formative Assessment | Teachers TV
Secondary Assessment for Learning - Geography | Teachers TV
KS3/4 Modern Foreign Languages - Peer Assessment | Teachers TV
Assessment for Learning - Secondary Maths and English - APP in Action | Teachers TV
The Concept of Formative Assessment. ERIC Digest.
Classroom Assessment and the National Science Education Standards
PDK International | Phi Delta Kappan: Stiggins V87 N4 Dec 2005
"assessment for learning" - Google Video
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REFERENCES
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Maryland State Department of Education. (2002, May Vol. 7 No. 3). Focused Feedback.
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