What is Formative Assessment?
By Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching and Learning
Formative assessment occurs when students practice something they just learned or give the educator information about how well they are learning. Because they understand how well they are learning, they know when to put in more effort, and the educator knows if learning has occurred or where there are errors. Formative assessment works best if:
- Feedback to the learner occurs in the lesson and requires little effort from the educator.
- Educators change what they are doing based on what they learn.
- Everyone knows this is ungraded practice, so it is safe to share what you do not know or say you are guessing.
Common Strategies
1. Think-Pair-Share: This strategy involves posing a question to the class, having students think about their response individually, then pairing up to discuss their thoughts, and finally sharing some of their ideas with the larger group. Feedback comes from their peers and from hearing what others said.
2. Polls and Quizzes: Using technology like Poll Everywhere, the educator can ask multiple-choice questions during the lecture to assess student understanding in real-time. The educator can see what everyone is saying and give feedback to the group. Pairs can also debate the options together before seeing the right answer.
3. Concept Mapping: Students create visual diagrams that connect different concepts learned in the class. This helps them organize their knowledge and see relationships between ideas. Educators can circulate to see connections students are using or have students use technical tools to collaborate digitally.
4. Peer Review: Students review and provide feedback on each other's work. This not only helps the reviewer understand the material better but also provides the author with diverse perspectives on their work.
5. Error Analysis: The educator is analyzing common errors in student work to identify misunderstandings and guide future instruction and sees common patterns. The educator shares the error to the class, and says “this is incorrect, discuss what is wrong and why.” Groups discuss the options and vote on which one is the reason. Students use feedback from each other and the educator to learn to recognize and correct their own mistakes.
Title image credit: Photo by Zen Chung from Pexels