Thebridgebetw
Thebridgebetw
Thebridgebetw
The most useful formative assessments make it possible for students to show what they know, understand, and can do; therefore,
it's useful for teachers to build some flexibility into formative assessments. For example, a student who is learning English may be
able to draw and label a diagram of the relationship between density and buoyancy but not write a paragraph explaining it. The
prompt, "Use an example from your experience to illustrate the idea that a person's culture shapes his or her perspective," is more
likely to draw a meaningful response from a broader range of students than the prompt, "Explain the relationship between culture
and perspective." Likewise, asking students to illustrate how fractions are used in sports, music, cooking, shopping, building
something, or another area they are interested in is more likely to be revealing than asking them simply to explain uses of fractions.
In formative assessments (as in summative ones), it's acceptableand often wiseto allow students some latitude in how they
express what they know, understand, and can do. Assessment formats and conditions can vary as long as all forms of the
assessment measure the same KUDs.
6. Assess persistently.
Formative assessment should permeate a class period. A great teacher is a habitual student of his or her students. A keen
observer, the teacher is constantly watching what students do, looking for clues about their learning progress, and asking for input
from students about their status.
These teachers walk among their students as they work, listening for clues about their understanding, asking questions that probe
their thinking, taking notes on what they see and hear. They ask students to signal their level of confidence with the task they are
doing with thumbs-up, thumbs-down, or thumbs-sideways, for example, to gain a sense of how the class as a whole is faring. They
ask students to write answers to questions on whiteboards or to respond with clickers so they can get an in-process sense of how
individual students are coming along.
They use start-up prompts to see what students learned from last night's homework. They use exit cards to assess student
understanding as a class ends. They spot-check student work with an eye to seeing how students are progressing with a particular
skill. They talk with students as they enter and leave the classroom, at lunch, or while waiting for the school buses to leave. They
solicit and are alert to parent input about their students' strengths, attitudes, work habits, and goals.
It isn't really so much that these teachers use formative assessments often. It's that they do so continuallyformally and informally,
with individuals and with the group, to understand academic progress and to understand the human beings that they teach. For
these teachers, formative assessment is not ancillary to effective teaching. It is the core of their professional work.
trajectory. It is wasteful of time, resources, and learner potential not to make instructional plans based on that understanding.
Assessment of each learning experience informs plans for the next learning experience. Such an assessment process never ends.
A classroom is a system with interdependent partseach affecting the other for better or worse. The learning environment, quality
of curriculum, use of formative assessment, instructional planning, and implementation of classroom routines work together to
enhance student learningor, if any of the elements does not function effectively, to impede it. Fruitful use of formative assessment
is an essential component in the mix.
References
Hattie, J. (2012). Visible learning for teachers: Maximizing impact on learning. New York: Routledge.
Wiliam, D., (2011). Embedded formative assessment. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree.
Carol Ann Tomlinson (cat3y@virginia.edu) is William Clay Parrish Jr. Professor and Chair of Educational Leadership, Foundation, and Policy
at the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. She is the author, with Tonya R. Moon, of Assessment and
Student Success in a Differentiated Classroom (ASCD, 2013).