So here the thing, this year i have been working on mind growth set but we just had exams and the students fell into the Bell Curve and are crushed.  I feel like I failed.  For a short period of time, I had students leaning in and working on the math but they were not able to perform on the January exam.  Now I have a lot of students wondering what happened? I too am wondering.  I give formative assessments but need to do better at improving my instructions to help those who struggled.  It seems we are always moving ahead in order to cover the outcomes. I still feel like my am sorting students for grade 10.  I realize that students already came with gaps in their math but I find it frustrating that I am not as far along as I had hoped.  

I love the definition you provided for formative assessments being “any strategy, tool, and process” for helping us learn how to better help our students grow. Some of the most heated debates I have witnessed between teachers over the years has been about the difference between formative and summative assessments. This really helped cement that difference for me.

My biggest question at the moment is how can all of this be successfully organized and structured in classrooms?

I love the new terminology or formative assessment as a process. I think a lot of teachers do it more than they think. Warm ups , questioning strategies, even having students work on a problem on white boards are formative assesments. I am interested on more detail about how we can incorporate these into our grades without killing ourselves with work in a way that is fair and can be justified to parents and students.

The redefining of formative assessment as a process rather than as a tool is a key idea, I think. There’s formative assessment built into a lot of what we do – even when we sit next to kids and have them take us through how they’re thinking about a problem. My struggle tends to be with documentation. I tend to keep a lot of those conversations in my head. I’ve tried sticky notes and notebooks, but I only end up looking back on them much later, when it’s too late. I use the “stuff in my head” to generally guide next steps (do we proceed? do we spend more time?), which, I know, is definitely not the way to go. I do document any written assessments (like checkpoints) on a standards-based system, but it’s the other parts I’m not doing well on.

This lesson has broadened my understanding of formative assessment.i had learnt in the past years’ hat formative assessment is a process and continuous and It should help in the learning process of students. The missing part of the assessment is the “how”. This course is exciting.

• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by  Maria Carmela Sanchez.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by  Maria Carmela Sanchez.
• This reply was modified 1 year, 1 month ago by  Maria Carmela Sanchez.

Great reflections here, friends!
A big take away I’m hearing from @maria-carmela-sanchez-magallanes @tania-ash @sunni-burns and many others along this thread is the idea of formative assessment as a process. As Maria was mentioning, the hardest part is the “how”. Like so many other aspects of effective mathematics instruction, I think it is both a science and an art which means it takes a LOT of planning, thinking, and refining as you go.
Let’s work together here to try to make this a reality!

I definitely have used the concept of formative assessments for grades. Often admin pressures us to put a certain number of grades in the book per week. I want to use things as formative assessments are intended, but often fall back on old practices. This is especially hard with shared courses that are supposed to follow the same practices regardless of the teacher so that a grade means the same thing regardless of the teacher.

Basically to me this sounds like most formative assessments may not even be written down. I do a lot of formative assessments by having all students working on the whiteboard to solve questions for the current topic, I’m able to watch 16 students working the same problem at the same time and then adjust the learning based on their progress, it is a beautiful thing, I just haven’t really thought of it as a formative assessment before.

This is so true. The point of assessment must be to lead our teaching so that we can maximise learning.

I used to do quizzes the same way that Jon described and now look at them as what can I do differently to reach the few or many students that didn’t get the math topic.

Assessment vs Evaluation and the idea of Formative Assessment as a process. We say we use common formative assessments, but if we don’t do anything with the results (provided actionable feedback to students), it really is more of an evaluation tool.

We have to rethink about assessment and shift our priorities towards our students ‘learning.

The common misconception: formative=quiz & summative=test.

I need to learn more about different strategies for each

The idea that formative assessments were more about the tools resonated with me. I know if I asked my staff about formative assessments, they would say we give quizzes or exit tickets. But if there is no feedback loop to improve learning then…

I wonder what kind of structures we need to put in place to ensure we close that feedback loop and just don’t keep giving quizzes and expecting kids to change behavior if they’re grades on quizzes isn’t good.

For years we have been using EQAO data to try and inform out teaching – wasting time

We should have been using that time to talk to teachers about using just in time assessment to support students’ mathematical growth. How to create these assessments – what to look for – how to use the just in time data and information to continue to not only improve student learning, but to improve teachers’ observation abilities as well.

Great to get clarity on summative versus formative and that formative must be while the learning is happening. So many hours seems to be spent by schools entering data about students onto school management systems but no teaching rolls out of that so its such wasted effort.

Great info on the difference between formative and summative assessment. I’m left with the question of how to incorporate this into the grade book? Should I give a student a grade on a formative assessment that helped me learn about their learning? Further, can I/how do I give a student a grade from a conversation we had about their learning? That seems disingenuous to the student and almost a “gotcha”. I’m sure these will be answered in the future.

Another lingering question is how can I make sure students use the data/feedback from formative assessments?

• This reply was modified 4 months ago by  Christopher Ernst.

It’s clear that many of us, as mathematics teachers, agree that assessment for student growth is most beneficial for students but simultaneously, feel pressured by peers, administrators and parents who are unfamiliar with this concept or simply disagree entirely. I want to integrate teaching with math tasks, guided math and assessment for learning connected to standards and struggle with the prioritizing of what to do first. Looking forward to each lessons’ opportunities.

I need to make sure that any form of assessment that I do is then used to inform myself and the student on how to go forward. Not all quizes need grades if they are truly formative assessment. I hope to learn more about other forms of assessment and how to integrate them into my class.

I wonder how I can improve the culture in my class to be about learning and growth and not about grades.

I have been using homework, quizzes, and tests really all in the same way, which is to evaluate and categorize students, not help inform them or aid in their learning. I know my reliance on these archaic grading practices stem in part to how I was taught but also in my own self doubt and lack of self efficacy. I’m wondering if I’m going to be able to recognize when students are truly understanding the math concepts I’m teaching.

I think the way I used assessment answered the question, “what is easiest for me as a teacher” rather than what is best for the student. I would give a short quiz and use the assessment as a gauge before a summative test but not as part of a continuous assessment where I am also adjusting instruction based on such assessment. Very much teaching at the kids and hoping they get it.

• This reply was modified 1 month, 1 week ago by  Anthony Waslaske.

I so appreciate the emphasis on “FOR” learning, thank you!

I feel like there is a marriage of ideas coming together: the problem-based approach, the notice and wonder, and the tracking of student growth and progress. Since the pandemic left our students virtual on Wednesday’s throughout the year, I’d like to find a way to take that day (this coming year) and use it as a growing/getting better day…I’m curious about the portfolios and how to incorporate spiral review – especially for my low students who seem to always need time to catch up.

Big takeaway: Formative is Frequent as A4L is continuous. I like this picture as it shifts the mind to quit thinking discretely about gathering information from student for learning. We gather information all the time! This is why remote learning was more difficult – as least for me. It was harder to get those candid/side conversations with students to figure out where they were in the learning process.

I am still wondering how to record this information. I have read The Thinking Classroom and Peter’s method, but I am not 100% on board with it. Moreover, my PLC is not either and we don’t have enough time to debate it before next year.