Creating a Formative Assessment Culture in your Classroom
Formative assessment is nothing new. Educators have been consciously or unconsciously assessing student understanding informally for decades. Formative assessment checks for student understanding, skills and misconceptions, guiding teachers to make decisions about future teaching. It also provides students with specific, descriptive feedback so that they are able to improve performance or understanding. It allows them to understand what success looks like and to determine how to do better next time (Stiggins, 2007). Formative assessment helps teachers to effectively differentiate instruction based on specific student needs and therefore improve student learning.
Most examples of formative assessment can be completed quickly and easily within lessons or on a daily basis. In general, the amount of information teachers are able to gather and the capacity for student improvement makes formative assessment well worth the time it takes. Formative assessment strategies can be used multiple times to get an accurate picture of student progress and to provide descriptive feedback to students, their achievements and the next step in their learning. Multiple strategies may be employed by teachers over time to develop a distinctive picture of each student’s progress.
Reasons to use formative assessment:
It enables you to assess student’s knowledge and understanding;
It enables you to reflect and improve on your teaching practice;
It can be used to motivate students and increase student engagement;
It gives you the opportunity to teach and assess physical literacy skills;
It affords you the opportunity to personalise learning; and
It assists in building positive relationships and classroom environments.
Formative assessment has the biggest impact on student outcomes when it is embedded in each and every lesson, becomes part of the teaching and learning culture and feedback guides future learning.
The landmark research of formative assessment conducted by Black and Wiliam (1998) titled ‘Inside the Black Box- Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment’ certainly paved the way for the years ahead in formative assessment in educational settings. The synthesis of their research in this paper concluded that the student learning gains triggered by formative assessment were “amongst the largest ever reported for educational interventions” (Black & Wiliam, 1998, p. 141) where strengthening the practice produces significant and often substantial learning goals.
These learning goals, coupled with a positive classroom environment, specific learning intentions, clear success criteria, engaging learning activities, self-reflection and effective feedback are the markers for meaningful learning.
So how does one embed formative assessment in each and every lesson we hear you asking? Formative assessment can take many forms within any classroom, including all Health and Physical Education learning spaces. It can be directed by the teacher, students or peers and it can take as little as 1-2 minutes. It may be the use of mini whiteboards, a verbal quiz or a Kahoot to begin the lesson to check for prior understanding. It may present in the lesson as basketball questioning or speed-dating (donut debates) to get students to think deeply about a concept. It could also be through the use of Graffiti Sheets or Post It notes to reflect on knowledge gained. Formative assessment may also exist through the use of self assessment or peer-assessment checklists in both theory and practical lessons. Electronic evidence such as photos or videos can be used as product exemplars.
References Black, P. and Wiliam, D. (1998). Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 80(2), 139-148. Stiggins, R (2007). Assessment through the student’s eyes, Educational Leadership, 64(8).
