One of my main goals for my final practicum was to become more familiar and comfortable with assessment. I felt as though I had not yet been exposed to it enough during previous practicums and overall felt fairly lost with the whole concept. I went into practicum wanting to master formative assessment, learn techniques for summative assessment, and begin to understand reporting.
I have learned that assessment for learning, or formative assessment, is key to being able to understand where our students are at and what they need to move forward. It can be done without creating hours of marking to do after school every day, and if you’re patient and observant, you can follow the learning progression along with the students, adapting your methods and content as you go and as is needed.
I think that when practicing formative assessment, an important element is to not rush into summative assessment before everyone is ready. The students are all going to learn at a different pace, and if you prioritize a timeline over the success of every student, some students are going to get left behind. Personally, I would much rather take more time with a content area than I planned than make a student feel inferior or that their learning experience does not matter just because they did not learn it fast enough. Much of my formative assessment techniques are soft methods. I prioritize my students feeling safe and comfortable in their learning over a harsh read ‘X’ on their worksheet without explanation. I trust in the process of allowing the students to find the error in their own ways and to self-correct as they all learn.
I conduct formative assessment a variety of ways:
First, I start off new content easy, focusing primarily on elements of the content that they likely would have already learned or practiced in a previous subject or grade. This instills confidence and a sense of motivation for the students moving forward. If I tell them that we are going to learn how to order and compare fractions, and then begin with simply identifying and writing fractions, then they will barely even notice the learning progression into the new territory. For this step, I conduct my formative assessment just through observation of their independent work in the class as well as their contributions to large group discussion or work. Once I have observed enough and am confident that every student has re-mastered what they already know, we move onto the new content.
As the students learn the new content, step-by-step, I have a few ways of conducting formative assessment. I begin like how I began above, with just observation and note-taking of who is doing well or who needs more time with the material. At this stage in the process, we all go through the work together as a class and they mark/correct their own without my intervention. I think this is an important part of the learning process because it allows them to see their own mistakes and to correct them without feeling embarrassed due to someone else seeing work that they feel like they did not do well on and marking it incorrectly. An incorrect mark when learning new material can be detrimental to their spirit going forward, and they may be less likely to try their best the next time.
Once the students have practiced with the new material, marked their own work, and experimented with manipulatives, we move onto activities where I can see individual progress. I do this through leading the students through examples and questions and having them use whiteboards to answer them. As they work, I circulate the room to see their final answer, at this point not letting them know if they got it right or not but just instead taking note of who is understanding and who needs more practice. Once I have circulated, I choose one student who I knew got the answer correct to come up and demonstrate how they found their answer. This way, the students who did not reach the correct answer can see where they went wrong in finding their solution. Another way for me to see exactly where each student is at is by using Plickrs. Plickrs is an app you get on your phone and an account you create on your computer where each student is given and assigned a sort of QR code. The code has 4 sides, each labelled with A, B, C, or D. I can choose what I want the students to complete, they see the question on the whiteboard, and then they hold the side with the answer they think is correct upright. I can then scan their paper with my phone and get immediate results as to what answer they all got, while they can only see the number of ‘votes’ per option. Through this, I can see if the students are ready for an assessment.
After these formative methods take place, and only once every student in the class has shown that they understand the material, do I move onto summative assessment. For Grade 4, summative assessment often looks like a short quiz with a lot of warning to be done independently. This is then marked and returned to the student to take home, get initialed by a parent or guardian, and returned to school where it is stored for future reference.
All-in-all, assessment for learning needs to be patient and gentle. The learning can, and should, be collaborative and experimental. The flexibility that soft formative assessment offers to the extending students is the ability to hone in on their skills and expand their learning, but it also allows more time and opportunity for the students who don’t understand in order to meet the expectations of the learning. If formative assessment if rushed and summative assessment comes too soon, all of the partial learning that has taken place will be forgotten to make room for whatever rushes up next.
I feel as though I have met my goal that I set before beginning this final practicum, and I feel confident that what I have learned about formative assessment will help myself and my future students when it comes time for me to have my very own classroom!