by Jolanta Maria Nitoslawska-Romer, M.Ed.
International Director of Academic Affairs, BE+Live
Formative assessments help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work and help teachers recognize where students are struggling and thus deal immediately with any problems that show up.
An example of a formative assessment would be asking students to draw a concept map to show their understanding of a topic, to write three sentences about the main point of today’s class, or to submit the draft of a story for early feedback. Formative assessments are generally low stakes, which means they have little or no point value in the final grade. Their goal is not to evaluate student knowledge or understanding based on standards or objectives or can-do statements (that’s summative) but rather to help them reach those end-of-unit or end-of-term goals.
In distance learning, teachers are especially concerned about checking that students understand. Providing meaningful feedback to students during this time is more important than ever. So, how can you do this without feeling totally overwhelmed?
Ensure that your students know the learning objectives or the learning outcomes and that they know what they will be expected to do or produce as evidence of their learning. Share rubrics or checklists at the beginning of a unit and then make sure that they know you are there to provide the support they need to reach that goal.
There are many digital tools* you can use to check for understanding. Be sure that you know your purpose: are you checking for content or purpose or process? Decide on a few tools and stick to them so that your students know what to expect so they don’t get bored and have some variety.
Collecting evidence of learning over time is helpful to both you and your students. They will then know how they are doing and what they still need to do to meet the requirements. Asking them to submit reflections, pictures, screenshots, or scans of their work makes it personal and will give you an idea of where they are at. With younger children, parents can send in photos or videos of their work.
And when they do, it is so important for you to give your students specific feedback on their work. This is not about giving a letter or number grade, or even a short comment (though that is better than nothing). It’s about letting them know how they are doing and what they still need to do to meet those goals. Feedback should follow three simple rules: be specific, be kind, and be helpful, and that’s it! At the same time, feedback works best when it’s connected to a genuine concern for students’ well-being: What’s working? What’s not working? What can I do to help?
You can provide feedback via written or sound recordings or videos. With older students, you can model how they can give helpful feedback (specific, helpful, kind) to each other in breakout groups or over a longer time frame. Pear Deck is one of the tools you could look into for this purpose. When you are having a live session with your class, use the yes/no buttons, the thumbs up or the private chat functions to communicate with your students.
We are hearing more and more about how live sessions with your whole class should be as short as possible. Think mini-lesson style: then your students can get to work on their own. Set up small group sessions where you can have personal conversations with 4-5 of your students; these will probably give you more information about how they are doing than any formal formative assessment.
Then adjust your plan to meet your curricular goals. Don’t try to do everything. Focus on the most important learning objectives and forget about the rest. For the English teachers out there: if your students read and write every day, the rest will all fall into place by itself.
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