Assess to Improve
Assessment is a powerful tool that teachers must use to monitor and adjust student learning as well as the effectiveness of lesson instruction. Teachers are constantly in search of the very thin boundary between what students have already learned and what they need to know next. Teachers need to locate this boundary in order to activate and build upon students’ prior knowledge. We must assess often to ensure that our instruction has reached students; to ensure that they have learned. The skill of assessing student comprehension and ability allows a teacher to lead them along this fluctuating line where students are challenged, stimulated, and engaged in the process of learning actively. Assessing helps keep us aware of what students do and do not know; what they are and are not yet able to do; and in what ways we still need to assist them.
DuFour, DuFour, and Eaker (2008), in their book Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at Work: New Insights for Improving Schools, differentiate between summative and formative assessment types. Both forms of assessment are useful in the classroom. But DuFour and company emphasize the value of formative assessment as vital to the measuring of both student learning and to improving the effectiveness of teacher instruction.
Summative assessment is an important tool we can use to hold students accountable for covering content material. (Stiggins, 2007) (DuFour, DuFour, & Eaker, 2008, para. 2, p. 202) Summative assessment is an “end-of-process” assessment where teachers evaluate student work as pass/fail, proficient/non-proficient, or yes/no according to whether the student has learned the intended material on time by. (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2000) (DuFour, DuFour, & Eaker, 2008, para. 1, p. 203) In contrast to formative assessment, summative assessment is an “assessment of learning”. The main limitation of summative assessment is that it does not provide information to help teachers improve the efficiency of their instruction. (2008, para., p. 203) Holding students responsible for the content of our lessons is important, however. Throughout my time as a student, I have heard stories about teachers who quiz students daily. Such quizzes, in terms of English classrooms, may be composed of a handful of literal, surface level questions that prompt students to produce short answers consisting of a sentence or two that recount events from the plot of a story. Students who expect a quiz each day, who know their teacher holds them accountable for the efforts they need to make in order to succeed, are more likely to keep up with the pace of course assignments.
Formative assessment is an “in-process” assessment; an “assessment for learning” that enables teachers to focus on monitoring and adjusting lesson instruction using evidence from the assessment to evaluate how effective their teaching practices have been; how much student learning has occurred; whether teachers have covered information thoroughly in instruction. Teaching and assessment, in this case, often occur simultaneously. Teachers then adapt instructional methods to recover information that students have not digested fully and allow more practice time for the building of skills, presenting material through different modes to accommodate a variety of learning styles. Formative assessment is more complex, involving more aspects than summative assessment. Dylan William and Marnie Thompson (2007) have outlined have outlined some aspects of successful formative assessments:
1.Clarify and share learning intentions and criteria for success. Make clear to students what they should know and be able to do and the criteria they should use to assess the quality of their work until it meets the intended standard.
2.Engineer effective classroom discussions, questions, and learning tasks.
3.Provide specific feedback that moves learners forward.
4.Activate students as instructional resources for one another. Train students to help each other assess and improve their work according to the criteria for success.
5.Activate students as the owners of their own learning. Ensure students have a clear understanding of what they are to learn and what “good” work looks like, so they will be able to monitor their own progress and identify the steps they must take to move forward, rather than relying solely on the judgement of the teacher.
(William and Thompson, 2007)
(DuFour, DuFour, and Eaker, 2008, p. 206)
DuFour, DuFour, and Eaker (2008) note the importance of using assessment to provide students with diagnostic and formative feedback. According to the editors, diagnostic feedback is “precise, accurate, and based on solid data,” heightening student awareness to, identifying, or diagnosing an area where improvement is needed. Diagnostic feedback provides important information to students, allowing them to begin thinking about possible solutions. Formative feedback provides students with more specific and precise information regarding how to achieve the intended outcome” (2008, para. 1, pg. 207). Teachers may find it beneficial to allow students the opportunity to solve their own problems and remediate their own deficits before providing more guidance. As an English teacher, diagnostic assessment may be useful when a student has overused a certain word for a writing assignment. The teacher may need only to address this deficiency with a verbal statement of observation. The problem may be easy enough for a student to fix by using a thesaurus. An example of using formative feedback to increase student achievement might involve the use of passive voice in writing. Correcting passive voice is a more complicated matter wherein a teacher would provide demonstrations and drills with which the student practices writing simple sentences denoting nouns as the doers of verbs, so to speak.
Reference:
DuFour, R., DuFour, B., & Eaker, B. (2008). Revisiting professional learning communities at work: New insights for improving schools. Bloomington, Indiana: Solution Tree.
DuFour, DuFour, and Eaker (2008), in their book Revisiting Professional Learning Communities at Work: New Insights for Improving Schools, differentiate between summative and formative assessment types. Both forms of assessment are useful in the classroom. But DuFour and company emphasize the value of formative assessment as vital to the measuring of both student learning and to improving the effectiveness of teacher instruction.
Summative assessment is an important tool we can use to hold students accountable for covering content material. (Stiggins, 2007) (DuFour, DuFour, & Eaker, 2008, para. 2, p. 202) Summative assessment is an “end-of-process” assessment where teachers evaluate student work as pass/fail, proficient/non-proficient, or yes/no according to whether the student has learned the intended material on time by. (Pfeffer & Sutton, 2000) (DuFour, DuFour, & Eaker, 2008, para. 1, p. 203) In contrast to formative assessment, summative assessment is an “assessment of learning”. The main limitation of summative assessment is that it does not provide information to help teachers improve the efficiency of their instruction. (2008, para., p. 203) Holding students responsible for the content of our lessons is important, however. Throughout my time as a student, I have heard stories about teachers who quiz students daily. Such quizzes, in terms of English classrooms, may be composed of a handful of literal, surface level questions that prompt students to produce short answers consisting of a sentence or two that recount events from the plot of a story. Students who expect a quiz each day, who know their teacher holds them accountable for the efforts they need to make in order to succeed, are more likely to keep up with the pace of course assignments.
Formative assessment is an “in-process” assessment; an “assessment for learning” that enables teachers to focus on monitoring and adjusting lesson instruction using evidence from the assessment to evaluate how effective their teaching practices have been; how much student learning has occurred; whether teachers have covered information thoroughly in instruction. Teaching and assessment, in this case, often occur simultaneously. Teachers then adapt instructional methods to recover information that students have not digested fully and allow more practice time for the building of skills, presenting material through different modes to accommodate a variety of learning styles. Formative assessment is more complex, involving more aspects than summative assessment. Dylan William and Marnie Thompson (2007) have outlined have outlined some aspects of successful formative assessments:
1.Clarify and share learning intentions and criteria for success. Make clear to students what they should know and be able to do and the criteria they should use to assess the quality of their work until it meets the intended standard.
2.Engineer effective classroom discussions, questions, and learning tasks.
3.Provide specific feedback that moves learners forward.
4.Activate students as instructional resources for one another. Train students to help each other assess and improve their work according to the criteria for success.
5.Activate students as the owners of their own learning. Ensure students have a clear understanding of what they are to learn and what “good” work looks like, so they will be able to monitor their own progress and identify the steps they must take to move forward, rather than relying solely on the judgement of the teacher.
(William and Thompson, 2007)
(DuFour, DuFour, and Eaker, 2008, p. 206)
DuFour, DuFour, and Eaker (2008) note the importance of using assessment to provide students with diagnostic and formative feedback. According to the editors, diagnostic feedback is “precise, accurate, and based on solid data,” heightening student awareness to, identifying, or diagnosing an area where improvement is needed. Diagnostic feedback provides important information to students, allowing them to begin thinking about possible solutions. Formative feedback provides students with more specific and precise information regarding how to achieve the intended outcome” (2008, para. 1, pg. 207). Teachers may find it beneficial to allow students the opportunity to solve their own problems and remediate their own deficits before providing more guidance. As an English teacher, diagnostic assessment may be useful when a student has overused a certain word for a writing assignment. The teacher may need only to address this deficiency with a verbal statement of observation. The problem may be easy enough for a student to fix by using a thesaurus. An example of using formative feedback to increase student achievement might involve the use of passive voice in writing. Correcting passive voice is a more complicated matter wherein a teacher would provide demonstrations and drills with which the student practices writing simple sentences denoting nouns as the doers of verbs, so to speak.
Reference:
DuFour, R., DuFour, B., & Eaker, B. (2008). Revisiting professional learning communities at work: New insights for improving schools. Bloomington, Indiana: Solution Tree.
