I have decided to focus my work project on formative assessment. The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that instructors can use to improve their teaching and students' learning. More specifically, formative assessments: help students identify their strengths and weaknesses and target areas that need work.

Assessment investigates the details of student learning for the following purposes:

• to find out what a learner already knows so what they are taught is appropriate to their needs (diagnostic assessment)
• to provide as-you-go feedback so the teacher and learner can see what the learner is learning and what they still need to learn, while they are learning (formative assessment)
• to provide at-the-end reporting so the teacher, learner, and parent can see how well the student has performed on the measure of the intended learning outcomes (summative assessment) (Kalantzis & Cope, 2012).

I have selected this topic because I want to learn about the impact of formative assessment relating to how teachers use pedagogy in the classroom relating to getting students to perform and teachers’ development while using formative assessment. As a retired military instructor who taught high school students, I used a lot of practical applications for formative assessment.

How should I use formative assessment results?

Formative assessments are generally used for planning future instruction and for helping students drive their own learning. In terms of future instruction, how you use assessment data most depends on what kind of results you get.

• If 80% or more demonstrate mastery, you'll likely want to proceed according to plan with subsequent lessons. For individual students not demonstrating mastery, you'll want to find ways to interject extra support. This might mean a differentiated assignment, a guided lesson during independent work time, or support outside of class.

• If between 50% and 80% demonstrate mastery, you'll need to use class time to have structured differentiation. You'll need to build this into the next lesson(s) if it isn't already planned. This means different activities or guided instruction for different groups of students. Students who've demonstrated mastery could engage in an extension activity or additional practice, or serve as support for other students. Students still attempting mastery could receive additional guided practice or additional instructional materials like multimedia resources or smaller "chunks" of content.

• If fewer than 50% demonstrate mastery, you'll need to do some whole-class reteaching. There are many approaches and concrete strategies for reteaching. Check out this article from Robert Marzano as well as this blog post from BetterLesson for ideas (Knowles, 2020).

Practical Learning:

Many students learn more easily by “doing” activities. This is particularly relevant in practical science activities. When studying a particular topic, we often begin with a practical exercise in the laboratory with an open-ended exercise where students are encouraged to make their own hypotheses and to test and draw conclusions (Hart, 2018). I have found that when it comes to my classes it’s important for students to be able to do basic military drill movements for example and they have to demonstrate they can do the movement in order to learn additional drill movements.

References

Hart, T. (2018, December 5). Practical work: the benefits, Challenges, and Solutions. Brighter Thinking Blog | Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/us/education/blog/2018/12/05/practical-work-benefits-challenges-and-solutions/‌

Kalantzis M. & Cope B. (2012). New learning: elements of a science of education (2nd ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Knowles, J. (2020, June 25). Teachers’ Essential Guide to Formative Assessment. Common Sense Education. https://www.commonsense.org/education/articles/teachers-essential-guide-to-formative-assessment
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