Planning Assessments

Creating Formative Assessments

What are formative assessments and why is it considered so important?

Formative assessments are ongoing assessments that helps students achieve the objectives. In a video on formative and summative assessments, Rick Wormeli (2011) argues that teachers should pay more attention to formative assessments, because it helps teachers to give better feedback to their students. A big part of these types of assessments is descriptive feedback. Feedback has a great impact on students' performance and helping them bridge the gap between the work and their understanding of it. 

In this blog, I will give examples of some formative assessments using one learning objective of a Common Core ELA standard I chose: 

Grade Level: Elementary Grade 2

Subject: English Literature 

Unit: Poetry 

Standard: ELA RL.2.4: Describe how words and phrases (e.g., regular beats, alliteration, rhymes, repeated lines) supply rhythm and meaning in a story, poem, or song.

Selected Learning Objective

Click here to see my infographic on all the learning objectives I created for this standard.

3 Formative Assessments

1. Exit tickets

On an education blog, I saw the example of a formative assessment I enjoy using, called Exit Tickets. This is a great formative assessment technique to see if students have a superficial understanding of the information or has some depth of understanding. They are typically short questions and focused on one particular skill. The teacher will let students answer it at the end of the lesson as a recap or reflection on work. This can also be used to anticipate something that you will use for the next day's lesson, to see how much of a topic the students know.

My objective (and standard) focuses on 3 main skills: identifying 1) rhythm 2) rhyme and 3) alliteration. I would have a few classes focusing on each individually. The questions I can ask are as follows:

For Alliteration

I will display the following instructions on an interactive whiteboard:

1. Write down at least 3 words that show alliteration. Ex. Sally sings songs
2. Why does it show alliteration? The "s" sound at the beginning of the words repeats.

For Rhythm

If possible, the students can do this at a computer in order to listen to a poem. Otherwise a printout could be given.

How many beats are there in:

Line 1__________

Line 2__________

Line 3__________

Line 4__________

For Rhyme

If possible, the students can do this at a computer in order to listen to a poem. Otherwise a printout could be given.

What are the rhyming words?

_________ and _________

_________ and _________

_________ and _________

Circle the ending sounds that creates the rhyme.

Self-reflection

I can also ask students to reflect on lessons:

1. Write 1 thing you have learned today.
2. I didn't understand...
3. Write one question you have about today's lesson.

The students will receive cards that they will use to write their answers. At the end of class, they will put it in a box. I can then group kids together in such a way that one student who grasps the meaning of alliteration/ rhythm or rhyme are in each group and then give them a quick Think-Pair-Share activity or an individual "Do Now" activity at the beginning of the next lesson. This will give me an idea of how well they grasp a concept and if I need to spend more time on something in this lesson.

You can also give differentiated instruction with tiered exit tickets to challenge students who has high-achieving levels (Teaching Channel). Due to poetry being quite a new type of text for 2nd Graders, I would start doing this after I explained certain poetic elements. It would look something like this:

First exit ticket:
What poetic elements does the following represent:
1. Sally sings songs _________
2. I like to run
   Because it's fun

Second exit ticket (for high-achieving students)
Write examples of the following:
1. Alliteration _______________________
2. Rhyme __________________________
                __________________________

2. Popsicle Sticks

This is a technique I have always used in my class. You will always have those kids in your class who wants to (and are able to) answer all the questions and those who sits back, maybe knows the answer but are too shy too answer or just does not care. To encourage student participation, use Popsicle sticks with students' names on them and draw one when you want a student to answer or reflect on something. This way, every student will definitely answer a question and you can see who struggles and who grasps a new concept.

This is part of a Checking for Understanding (CFU) strategy that allows teachers to make instructional decisions during a class and monitoring student progress in real time (Smartatmath 2011). It is also important to think about how you will respond to right answers, incomplete answers and wrong answers. You don't want a student to lose confidence in answering questions. Here are examples of how I would handle 2 different answering situations:

Repeating the correct answer given by a student together with the whole class step by step in order to ensure that everyone knows why the answer is correct:

Teacher: Rebecca, how many beats/syllables are in line one of the poem?
Rebecca: 3
Teacher: That's right, there are 3 syllables in line 1. Class, let's all say and count with our fingers the amount of syllables in line 1. "Spring (1) is (2) here (3)".

According to Lemov (2010) providing a cue helps guide a student to the correct answer:

Teacher: Of what poetic element do you think when you here Sally sings songs, James?
James: Uhm...rhyme?
Teacher: James, let's look at the line again. Look at the beginning letters of each word. They all start with...? (cue)
James: An "S"
Teacher: Great! Now what poetic element does it represent? What do we call a sound at the beginning of each word that is being repeated? (cue)
James: Oh, alliteration.
Teacher: That's right!

3. Poetry Book (graphic organizers)

Students will have a poetry book where they will include all their research for their final project: writing a poem, illustrating it and presenting it to a younger class. This will be done through:

• Learning center activities 
• Graphic Organizers
• Sense-O-Grams 
• Brainstorming webs
• Venn Diagrams
• Writing poetry
• Rough Drafts
• Originals
• Illustrating poetry to show the meaning 

Research and planning is a big part of writing poetry and it is important to teach this skill to students in this unit. I will help them and guide them through this process and show them what to include in their books. This will be continuously assessed and it will show me how well students understand certain poetry concepts. This is also a great way for students to self-assess their work and providing them with a visual representation of where they need to improve.

Conclusion

Formative assessments gives students a chance to improve their skills before the big (summative) assessments that influence their grades are implemented. In the video (at the beginning of this blog) Wormeli (2011) states that teachers tends to focus more on summative than formative assessments, but formative assessments should be equally (if not more) important:

Can kids learn without grades?Yeah. Can they learn without formative assessment and the feedback that comes from it? Not at all.

 My main goal as a teacher has always been to help students in any way I can. This really made me think more about formative assessment and appreciate it more. I will definitely be spending more time designing this than ever before.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
References
Edutopia. (May, 2010). Use Formative Assessment to Differentiate Instruction. Retrieved on December 15, 2016, from https://www.edutopia.org/stw-differentiated-instruction-learning-styles-video

Lemov, Doug. (2010). Seeting High Expectations. In Teach Like a Champion. San Francisco: Jossy Bass: 27-56..

NWEA. (n.d.). Classroom Techniques: Formative Assessment Idea number six. In Teach. Learn. Grow. [Education blog] Retrieved on December 15, 2016, from https://www.nwea.org/blog/2012/classroom-techniques-formative-assessment-idea-number-six/

Smartatmath. (Jun, 2011). Checking for Understanding.wmv. [video file] Retrieved on December 15, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd7TO9alAss

Rick Wormeli. (Nov, 2010). Rick Wormeli: Formative and Summative Assessments. [Video file] Retrieved on December, 15, 2016, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJxFXjfB_B4

Teaching Channel. (n.d.) Daily Assessments with Tiered Exit Cards. [video file] Retrieved on December 15, 2016, from https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/student-daily-assessment