Formative Assessment- Increasing Understandings

Over the past few years, I have been doing things differently when it comes to grading. In the past, I believed that grading students a lot, made them more accountable and thus more successful. This strategy worked okay, and student achievement levels were good. The issue I did not account for, however, was how this made everyone feel especially struggling learners.

Enter formative assessments. In my class these are graded, but only in the sense that they give the students a feeling for where they stand towards mastering a concept. These grades don't go into the grade book. I use daily "check ins" to gauge where students are in their understanding. Most days I use the senteo hand held devices to easily tell which concepts students understand and which need further exploring. The hand held devices do a great job of allowing me to find out how students are doing with concepts. Traditionally, a teacher would go over all the questions regardless of whether students all got it right and would have no real idea of how many students got a question wrong or what choices they picked. Not us, because I can delve into the incorrect answers and do error analysis with the class and only briefly mention the problems that everyone got right. This helps the student that got it wrong learn as well as the students who got it right by getting to explain. Let me mention that the whole process is anonymous to the students during this activity. No one ever knows how each other did.

Exploring
If there are questions that a few students picked an unusual answer, its time to dive into the reasoning behind their answer in a small group during a later part of that class period. Re-teaching can occur at that point, in a focused manner. This is done in a non- invasive way that allows me to find out misconceptions or identify incidences of rushing. Often times this can be accomplished by conferencing quietly with students and no one else is the wiser.

Analysis
Here's an example of what the students see after everyone has completed the questions. We can skip over question number one, because all students correctly answered. Question number two requires most of our attention as five students incorrectly answered. Interestingly enough, I can look at which students incorrectly answered numbers four and five and conference with them individually. Once the class is consistently scoring well (as in this example) it is then time to move on. Breaking apart the numbers in this way allows me to effectively tell whether students understand concepts and are ready for summative assessments.

Revisions
I've just presented one way to formatively assess students. There are many other ways that effective educators measure their students' progress daily. These can include conversations, casual observations or even specific questions that students ask. Writing within the content area can provide wonderful insights into the levels of understanding a students has. How ever you choose to formatively assess students, allowing them the opportunity to revise and demonstrate their increased understanding along the way is crucial.