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Formative Assessment in the Wooster Classroom

Summative vs. Formative Assessment

Summative assessments are formal assessments that teachers administer at the end of a learning experience to evaluate student learning. A summative assessment is intended to reflect what students did or did not learn by the end of a unit. These assessments tend to be larger and more formal in nature. Formative assessments, on the other hand, are both formal and informal assessments that teachers use to inform and drive their instruction. A key difference is the timing of these two types of assessments. Summative assessments happen at the end, while formative assessments happening during learning.

Here are some examples of different formative assessments that Wooster teachers are using in their classrooms these days.

Student Self-Monitoring Scaffold

Samantha Steele recently started to use a student self-monitoring scaffold with her students in English 8. This chart prompts students to record the daily learning intention, think about something that they did well today, and consider something that they can work on tomorrow. It also has room to included scores on exit tickets. This chart creates an informal record of students progress overtime. This particular formative assessment, guides students in actively self-assessing and self-monitoring in small ways on a daily basis. The strength of this scaffold is that it supports students in participating in their own learning and assessment.

Paper Exit Tickets

Here is an example of an exit ticket that Samantha uses in conjunction with the self-monitoring scaffold.

Kahoot

Brian Sullivan uses Kahoot in Conceptual Physics to create opportunities to formatively assess his students while also gamifying his classroom.

Most recently, as an Upper School Advisor, Brian converted a pencil and paper 2017 Trivia Quiz, which all upper school students were intended to complete during Community Time, into a shareable Kahoot for all Upper School teachers. Kahoot adds value to the classroom because it offers immediate feedback in a “quizzing” situation that is low stakes and fun!

Plickers

Evelyn Fetridge recently started using a formative assessment tool called Pickers in her classroom. With this tool, the teacher uses his or her phone to scan answer cards that students hold up.

During an in-class lecture, Evelyn uses Plickers to gauge the understanding level of the class as a whole. Again, this formative assessment tool allows the teacher to create a low stakes mini-quiz experience wherein student responses are private. Teachers can use this data to monitor the understanding of the class as a whole or can look at specific student answers to check for comprehension. Evelyn uses Plickers to gather in-the-moment data about the class’ understanding and this information informs Evelyn’s instruction -- Is it time to move on? Or we we need to revisit and reteach?

DRA

The Developmental Reading Assessment is an example of a formal formative assessment that Katie Johnstone uses with her students. The DRA is administered 2-3 times a year as a benchmark. The DRA helps teachers determine reading levels and specific strengths and weaknesses related to reading and/or writing (ex.: fluency, decoding, vocabulary, comprehension, spelling, written expression). It can help teachers determine why a student is not meeting a benchmark and/or what areas to focus on for instruction. For example, after analyzing a DRA the teacher may determine that the student needs help decoding words that contain vowel teams. The teacher can then plan specific, targeted interventions that address this specific need.

After completing the DRA’s for the entire class, teachers can create flexible groupings within the class to provide intervention and enrichment to meet the needs of the students. Running records (a component of the DRA) are also used to frequently monitor student progress.

~Elizabeth Higgins, Wooster School Director of Teaching and Learning and Parvin Taraz, Wooster School Assistant Director of Teaching and Learning, and Upper and Middle School Math Teacher