Formative Assessments (Please respond to my TWO peers) no word count

Formative assessments

This assignment takes a Q&A approach. That said this exercise progresses as follows.

How each teacher models what you read and learned about formative assessments?

Apparently, I learned that “formative assessments are used during a lesion to assess how much a student has learned during a class session” (Lefrançois, 2013). Based on the given videos, it is evident that every teacher uses formative assessment differently but with the common goal of trying to understand how much a particular student has grasped during the lesion.

For example, teacher Benjamin Mook designs and uses an assessment that makes use of the student’s mistake to determine if the class could identify the mistake, apply a step by step approach to get to the right answer of a given mathematical problem. He identifies a mistake a given student makes during his class, lets some time pass, repackages the mistake in a form of a question and throws it back to the students in a different time for them to identify the mistake and solve the math problem. He would go around the classroom “assessing what the students are doing and help them to apply the right steps that would lead to the correct answer” (Edutopia, 2011). By the time the student gets to the answer, they will have learned the steps that lead to that right answer.  

On his part, teacher Drew Crandall packages formative assessment and calls it “exit ticket” (Teaching Channel, 2013) and gives it to his class of students to determine how much a student has grasped. It is through this form of formative assessment that the teacher is able to where exactly is a particular student is regarding his or her understanding of the concepts of the class. Through this assessment, Crandall is able to design the way forward for that particular student.   

What evidence did you see and hear regarding formative assessments being an assessment FOR learning? More specifically, how did each teacher assess during learning?

Benjamin Mook gives his students wrong questions to determine if they could use the right steps and or methods to get to the right answer. This way, by the time the student gets to the right answer, he or she would have learned and applied the right steps to get to that right answer. For those that do not get to the right answer applying the right steps, Mook would go around explaining to them how to go about it till they have mastered the steps.   

Drew Crandall uses exit tickets during the class session to assess if the student can properly analyze a given math problem and identify a pattern. The teacher can identify those that cannot do that and understands that they have not grasped the concepts of the lesson. Crandall knows what to do to impart knowledge. 

How were they able to determine the current progress of their students in relation to mastering the objective?  How did each teacher model the provision of feedback?

Mook could go around the classroom and look at the way the students are working through the given question. By looking through the steps, he could determine whether a given student is doing the right thing. For those that are stuck, he could take some personalized time to show them how to do it.

On his part Crandall packaged a given question into an exit ticket which every student has to work through. He goes to every student to explain to him how he or she went about doing the exercise. It is during this explanation that Crandall could provide feedback and help the student better understand, the concept he is teaching at that time. 

What connections can you make between the teachers’ strategies to assess for learning and their eventual assessment of learning through a summative assessment? In other words, what can you see coming as preparation for a larger, more comprehensive summative assessment?

            During the class session both teachers use their respective strategies aimed at identifying how much they have grasped the concepts and teaching of the class. As the assessments progress, they help the students get a better understanding given concepts such that at the end of the assessment, when every student has learned something, it is when the teacher would sum up and conclude the class.

References

Edutopia. (2011). Keeping it relevant and "authentic"[Video File]. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/stw-assessment-authentic-relevant-lessons-video 

Lefrançois, G. R. (2013). Of learning and assessment [Electronic Version]. Retrieved from https://content.ashford.edu/ Chapter 1: Introduction to Learning and Assessment

Teaching Channel. (2013). Assess and plan with exit tickets. Retrieved from https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/teacher-assessment-strategy