From Small but Mighty: How Everyday Habits Add Up to More Manageable and Confident Teaching (pp. 78-80), M. Plotinsky, 2024, ASCD. ASCD Copyright 2024. Reprinted with permission.
Over the past few years, formative approaches have received significant attention as a preferred assessment method, due to the ideology behind the practice. Not so long ago, students were taught material in the classroom, primarily through direct instruction, and were then asked to demonstrate their learning in what are now called summative or “high-stakes” assessments. Ta. In this model, it wasn’t just grades that were rejected after test results were returned. There was also an assumption that students knew enough material to move forward with new concepts, and that those who were falling behind had to catch up or succumb to an ongoing (perhaps permanent) struggle.
This sink-or-swim approach to education has fallen out of favor over time, especially due to increased awareness of equity-based instruction and the aftereffects of teaching and learning during a pandemic. Turning a blind eye to student struggles is harmful and closes off opportunities for growth. Furthermore, the idea of determining student performance within predetermined content standards only at the end of a unit of instruction is fundamentally unsound. Ideally, teachers clear up confusion and continually check for understanding throughout the learning unit.
The pushback that leaders often encounter when they ask teachers to formatively assess students more frequently centers on protecting two scarce goods: time and bandwidth. Teachers ask how they can assess students frequently when instructional periods are short, grades pile up, and district leaders don’t allow extra time to plan and prepare.
Sometimes the answer to a complex question is surprisingly simple, and that’s the case in this example. Rather than thinking of formative assessment as a drawn-out process, it helps to focus on using tools that tell you what you need to know right away. The following assessment banks offer several proven methods for quickly gathering information about what students know and can do. Students will be asked to do one of the following:
Please complete a short survey (1 or 2 questions).
Summarize your daily learning goals in one sentence.
Fill out an exit or entry ticket that shares your concept or poses an open-ended question.
Hold up color-coded cards (often red, yellow, and green to match traffic lights) to indicate your level of understanding or confusion.
Think briefly (3-5 sentences) about the concept.
Complete the sentence stem: “I still don’t understand…”
Questions that do not require immediate attention should be left in the communal “parking area.”
To clear up any immediate confusion, write out your “burning questions” on the whiteboard.
Instead of writing about important concepts, draw them.
Take new learning and apply it to different situations.
Create a short assessment for your colleagues to complete.
Write a simple social media style summary of your learning.
Create a “mic drop” statement that leaves everyone with their final thoughts for the day, either verbally or in writing.
When students complete simple assessment activities like this, they focus more clearly on the results of what they have learned, and their progress becomes more visible. Short comprehension checks do not negate the need for longer summative tests that show what students have learned by the end of a unit or period of study. But when teachers get tired of giving one long assessment after another of questionable merit, getting into the habit of regularly using quick formative strategies can save a lot of stress and move everyone in the classroom forward. Valuable data will be revealed.
