Formative Assessment Reflection

For this assignment, we were asked to design some formative Assessments. Before going into the assignment itself, I want to answer to questions:

1) What different forms of assessment exist?

There are primarily two types of assessments we, as teachers, can use. The first is formative assessment. Formative assessment typically is used to measure the process of learning during or over an instructional period. Formative assessments can be quizzes, games, activities, projects, presentations, or even thinking routines. While summative assessment is used to measure a student’s learning at the end of a Unit and what a student has learned throughout a course. We can think of them as exams, reports, papers, or end of term projects (Zook).

2) Why is assessment and feedback critical to a learners’ achievement?

Assessment is important to useful to teachers as it allows us to see and measure student progress. Assessments tell us how closely students are to having mastered curriculum goals and standards. The results from assessments also help us as teachers dictate the pace of our course and determine whether or not students are ready for new material or new more time to master the material we have been presenting in class.

Arguably, feedback to the student is more important that assessment. Without proper, prompt, and comprehensive feedback, a student does not know what they are doing incorrectly or how to improve their learning. Feedback is how students know what they are doing well and in areas, specifically that they need to improve. If we as a teacher give poor feedback or don’t give feedback at all then students will not understand their mistakes and make the proper adjustments for future assignments. Additionally, feedback works as a way for teachers to let students know that they care about a student and that student’s progress.

In our assignment we had a cohort member review the formative assessments we designed. Overall I thought the process was very beneficial to my assessment design thought process. 

I found out that I actually do a fair amount of formative assessment already in my classroom. However, I did not have a very systematic way of tracking those assessments. Additionally, I’m not sure all formative assessment needs to be tracked and recorded. As I teach in China the classroom setting is very different from that of the US. Both formative and summative assessments in the current US educational setting are tightly linked to Common Core Standards (CCS). As a result, the need to track these things is not as important in China. On a whole, the Chinese education system is much closer to the British system. Both of which are almost entirely focused on testing (summative assessments).

Nonetheless, the process of designing and reviewing my own formative assessments have having those assessments judged by others is helping in figuring how to improve the design of the courses I lead.

References:

Zook, C. (n.d.). Formative vs. Summative Assessments: What's the Difference? Retrieved from https://www.aeseducation.com/blog/formative-vs.-summative-assessments-what-do-they-mean#targetText=In a nutshell, formative assessments has learned throughout a course.