To help us work towards our school goal of improving our understanding and practice of assessment, my principal has provided our staff with a copy of Classroom Assessment for Student Learning: Doing it Right - Using it Well, by Jan Chappuis, Rick Stiggins, Steve Chappuis, and Judith Arter. As I make my way through the book, I will be summarizing my learning as a means of organizing my thoughts and getting clarification on particular ideas.
Chapter 2 - Assessment for and of Learning
Impact of Formative Assessment on Learning
- students need opportunities to express understanding
- dialogue between teachers and students needs to be reflective and explore understandings
- feedback should be about an individuals work with advice on how to improve; no comparisons to others
- students need to be trained in self-assessment
Formative vs. Summative
1 ) Formative
- informal or formal
- to improve student learning
- reason for assessing
- promote increases
- support growth
- help students meet learning targets
- audience
- students
- focus of assessment
- specific targets selected by teachers to help students develop mastery
- place in time
- a process during learning
- primary users
- students, teachers, parents
- typical uses
- help teachers diagnose and respond
- help parents see progress and support students
- provide students with insight
2 ) Summative
- formal
- to make a judgement about student competency
- reason for assessing
- document mastery
- measure achievement status
- audience
- others
- focus of assessment
- standards for which schools/teachers/students are held accountable
- place in time
- an event after learning
- primary users
- admin, teachers, students, parents
- typical uses
- grading decisions
Formative Assessment only increases students understanding when:
1 ) it aligns directly with the targets to be learned
2 ) the items/tasks match what has been taught
3 ) it is detailed enough to pinpoint misunderstandings
4 ) results are available quickly
5 ) teachers and students take action with the results
7 Strategies of Formative Assessment
1 ) Provide students with a clear & understandable vision of the learning target
- student friendly language
- provide scoring criteria/rubrics
- ask, "why are we doing this?" "what are we learning"
2 ) Use examples of strong and weak work
- anonymous examples
- explain what parts are strong/weak and why
- share the development/revision process so students know that it doesn't have to be a one-shot deal
3 ) Offer regular descriptive feedback
- direct attention to learning and guide improvement
- during learning
- address partial understandings
- do not do the thinking for the students
- limit info to the amount students can act on at this time; don't overwhelm them
4 ) Teacher students to self-assess and set goals
- should be done regularly with all students; not just an "add-on"
5 ) Design lessons to focus on one target at a time
- easier to address misconceptions
- make sure students know all parts must come together
* I really like the suggested "agree-disagree-depends-don't know" pre-test example
6 ) Teach student focused revision
- small group feedback instead of big-scale reteaching
- students can check for errors in work samples
7 ) Engage students in self-reflection and let them keep track and share their learning
- moves work away from the teacher and onto the students
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I WANT TO KNOW:
What exactly do they mean by "audience" when comparing formative and summative assessment?
To me, the audience of a formative assessment would be the students and the teacher and the audience of a summative assessment would be all stakeholders.
What do you think?
Please leave your thoughts below :)