Summative Assessmen1
Summative Assessmen1
Summative Assessmen1
When gauging student learning, two approaches likely come to mind: a formative or summative
assessment.
Fortunately, feeling pressure to choose one or the other isn’t necessary. These two types of
learning assessment actually serve different and necessary purposes.
In this article, we’ll be exploring:
Formative assessment occurs regularly throughout a unit, chapter, or term to help track not only
how student learning is improving, but how your teaching can, too.
According to a WestEd article, teachers love using various formative assessments because they
help meet students’ individual learning needs and foster an environment for ongoing feedback.
Take one-minute papers, for example. Giving your students a solo writing task about today’s
lesson can help you see how well students understand new content.
Catching these struggles or learning gaps immediately is better than finding out during a
summative assessment.
Such an assessment could include:
In-lesson polls
Partner quizzes
Self-evaluations
Ed-tech games
One-minute papers
Visuals (e.g., diagrams, charts or maps) to demonstrate learning
Exit tickets
Credit: Alberto G.
It occurs at the end of a unit, chapter, or term and is most commonly associated with final
projects, standardized tests, or district benchmarks.
Typically heavily weighted and graded, it evaluates what a student has learned and how much
they understand.
Examples of summative assessment include:
Teachers and administrators use the final result to assess student progress, and to evaluate
schools and districts. For teachers, this could mean changing how you teach a certain unit or
chapter. For administrators, this data could help clarify which programs (if any) require tweaking
or removal.
While we just defined the two, there are five key differences between formative and summative
assessment requiring a more in-depth explanation.
Focuses on the process of student learning Emphasizes the product of student learning
During vs after
Teachers use formative assessment at many points during a unit or chapter to help guide student
learning.
Summative assessment comes in after completing a content area to gauge student understanding.
Improving vs evaluating
If anyone knows how much the learning process is a constant work in progress, it’s you! This is
why formative assessment is so helpful — it won’t always guarantee students understand
concepts, but it will improve how they learn.
Summative assessment, on the other hand, simply evaluates what they’ve learned. In her
book, Balanced Assessment: From Formative to Summative, renowned educator Kay
Burke writes, “The only feedback comes in the form of a letter grade, percentage grade, pass/fail
grade, or label such as ‘exceeds standards’ or ‘needs improvement.’”
Little vs large
Let’s say chapter one in the math textbook has three subchapters (i.e., 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3). A
teacher conducting formative assessments will assign mini tasks or assignments throughout each
individual content area.
Whereas, if you’d like an idea of how your class understood the complete chapter, you’d give
them a test covering a large content area including all three parts.
Monitoring vs grading
Formative assessment is extremely effective as a means to monitor individual students’ learning
styles. It helps catch problems early, giving you more time to address and adapt to different
problem areas.
Summative assessments are used to evaluate and grade students’ overall understanding of what
you’ve taught. Think report card comments: did students achieve the learning goal(s) you set for
them or not?
Are you a school or district admin who wants to learn more about Prodigy?School leaders can
use Prodigy to: