Methods of Formative Assessment

 There are many ways to integrate formative assessment into K-12 classrooms. Although the key concepts of formative assessment such as constant feedback, modifying the instruction, and information about students’ progress do not vary among different disciplines or levels, the methods or strategies may differ. For example, researchers developed generative activities and model-eliciting activities that can be used as formative assessment tools in mathematics and science classrooms. Others developed strategies computer supported collaborative learning environments. More information about implication of formative assessment in specific areas is given below.

Purpose of Formative Assessment: The following are examples of application of formative assessment to content areas:

Formative Assessment in Math Education:

In math education, it is really important for teachers to see how their students approach the problems and how much mathematical knowledge and at what level students use when solving the problems. That is, knowing how students think in the process of learning or problem solving makes it possible for teachers to help their students overcome conceptual difficulties and, in turn, improve learning. In that sense, formative assessment is diagnostic. To employ formative assessment in the classrooms, a teacher has to make sure that each student participates in the learning process by expressing their ideas; there is a trustful environment -in which students can provide each other with feedback; s/he (the teacher) provides students with feedback; and the instruction is modified according to students’ needs. In math classes, thought revealing activities such as model-eliciting activities (MEAs) and generative activities provide good opportunities for covering these aspects of formative assessment.

Formative assessment in Second/ Foreign Language Education:

As an ongoing assessment and it focus on process, it helps teachers to check the current status of their students’ language ability, that is, they can know what the students know and what the students do not know. It also gives chances to students to participate in modifying or replanning the upcoming classes. Participation in their learning grows students’ motivation to learn the motivation. It also raises students’ awareness on their target languages, which results in resetting their own goals. In consequence, it helps students to achieve their goals successfully as well as teachers be the facilitators to foster students’ target language ability.

In classroom, short quizzes, reflectional journals, or portfolios could be used as a formative assessment.

Formative Assessment in Elementary Education:

In primary schools is used to inform the next steps of learning. Teacher and students both use Formative Assessments as a tool to make decisions based on data. Formative assessment occurs when teachers feed information back to students in ways that enable the student to learn better, or when students can engage in a similar, self- reflective process. The evidence shows that high quality formative assessment does have a powerful impact on student learning. Black and Wiliam (1998) report that studies of formative assessment show an effect size on Standardized Tests of between 0.4 and 0.7, larger than most known educational interventions. (The effect size is the ratio of the average improvement in test scores in the innovation to the range of scores of typical groups of pupils on the same tests; Black and William recognize that standardized tests are very limited measures of learning.) Formative assessment is particularly effective for students who have not done well in school, thus narrowing the gap between low and high achievers while raising overall achievement. Research examined by Black and William supports the conclusion that summative assessments tend to have a negative effect on student learning.

Example of Formative Assessment in an Elementary Classroom

Activities that can be used as Formative Assessment Tools in Mathematics and Science Classrooms

Model-eliciting Activities (MEAs):

Model-eliciting activities are based on real-life situations where students, working in small groups, present a mathematical model as a solution to a client’s need. The problem design enable students to evaluate their solutions according to the needs of a client identified in the problem situation and sustain themselves in productive, progressively effective cycles of conceptualizing and problem solving. Model-eliciting activities (MEAs) are ideally structured to help students build their real-world sense of problem solving towards increasingly powerful mathematical constructs. What is especially useful for mathematics educators and researchers is the capacity of MEAs to make students’ thinking visible through their models and modeling cycles. Teachers do not prompt the use of particular mathematical concepts or their representational counterparts when presenting the problems. Instead, they choose activities that maximize the potential for students to develop the concepts that are the focal point in the curriculum by building on their early and intuitive ideas. The mathematical models emerge from the students’ interactions with the problem situation and learning is assessed via these emergent behaviors.

Generative Activities:

In a generative activity, students are asked to come up with outcomes that are mathematically same. Students can arrive at the responses or build responses from this sameness in a wide range of ways. The sameness gives coherence to the task and allows it to be an “organizational unit for performing a specific function.”

Other activities can also be used as the means of formative assessment as long as they ensure the participation of every student, make students’ thoughts visible to each other and to the teacher, promote feedback to revise and refine thinking. In addition, as a complementary to all of these is to modify and adapt instruction through the information gathered by those activities.

 Archna Sharma