Formative Assessments

Formative assessments are assessments for learning. They support learning during the learning process rather than assessing how much was learned by a particular point in time.

Formative assessments provide feedback used to set learning goals. Students are able to make decisions to improve their learning and teachers make decisions to adjust their instruction. The focus is teaching and learning. Formative assessments help differentiate instruction.

The feedback provided should be descriptive not evaluative. Direct, constructive feedback is needed and should provide learners with the next steps that should be taken. Feedback should be prompt to provide motivation and meaning. It should be student-friendly.

There are a variety of formative assessment techniques.

• Ticket out the door: students respond to one or two questions on a piece of paper at the end of class and give you the paper on the way out the door
• 3-2-1: one example is for students to write 3 things they learned, two questions they still have, and one opinion
• Learning logs: students write reflections of what they have learned
• K-W-L: a graphic organizer to assess what students "know," "wish to know," and "have learned" about a particular topic
• Rubrics
• Think-Pair-Share: Students think about a question or topic in pairs or a small group and then share the thinking with a larger group
• One sentence summary: students summarize what they learned in a single sentence that answers the questions
• Self and peer assessment
• Minute paper: give students an open-ended question and three to five minutes to write an answer
•  Oral Questioning: question students throughout the lesson to check for understanding
• Application Cards: students write down at least one real-world application for what they have just learned

Waiting until the end of teaching to find out how well students have learned is too late. Ongoing assessments and continuous adjustments are the way to achieve the best performance.