Reflection #15 - Formative Assessment

In my last post I talked about the last department meeting I had and how great the discussion was between us. I briefly mentioned a side conversation we had on formative assessment and how there were a bunch of different opinions on the subject. Since the meeting, most of my time has been spent thinking about that conversation. (I had surgery the day after the meeting and have been out of work since, so I've had a lot of free time.)

I assumed that everyone had the same definition of formative assessment that I had and led part of our discussion based on that assumption. In hindsight, I realize that we should have come to a consensus on what formative assessment is and what it should look like in our school, before using the term in our official grading policy...lesson learned the hard way. Looking back on our discussion, I realize that there was a disagreement on what exactly formative assessment was. Some seemed to think an assessment was formative if it wasn't graded while others seemed to think that it could be graded, but not for accuracy. My thought has been that an assessment is formative if you use the results to make decisions about what you're going to do next in the lesson, unit, chapter, etc...

After realizing that the people in the room had a variety of ideas of what constitutes formative assessment, I decided I needed to do some research. So I bought a book that was recommended by someone I follow on Twitter on formative assessment and started reading. The book, Embedding Formative Assessments by William and Leahy, has some really great research-based ideas to improve any teacher's formative assessment process. The authors made a good point in that almost any assessment can be used for either formative or summative purposes. So, how an assessment is used, rather than the content on the assessment, is the key to determining the nature of the assessment. For example, if a teacher gives an assessment, grades it, enters it in the gradebook, and moves on to the next lesson, then the assessment was used in a summative manner. If a teacher analyzes the questions and answers on the assessment and then plans his/her next lesson(s) based on that analysis, then that same assessment was used in a formative manner, regardless of whether the grade was input into the gradebook or not.

It's really amazing how much I have learned since embracing social media. I used to be limited to the people I worked with for stealing and coming up with original ideas and/or knowledge. Now I have hundreds of people sharing thousands of ideas for me to consider. This book is only one of probably hundreds on formative assessment, but it has already made me better at my job. All because of some post one of the people I follow made on Twitter...good thing I'm not stubborn, or I would have never joined social media based on my first impressions!