FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT (Assessment for learning)

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).
FLS Page 15