Education is no stranger to change, especially when it comes to the many approaches to grading and assessments.
School districts are embracing modern teaching methods and new technologies. Remote and hybrid learning environments are becoming the norm. And most notably, schools are changing how they assess students and measure learning progress by embracing formative assessments.
There's a good reason for that. Formative assessments can improve student outcomes by promoting enhanced learning, experimentation, and ownership. Today, we're going to explore a few of the main benefits of formative assessments — but first, let's talk about how they differ from how we used to do things.
Formative assessments monitor student learning and progress throughout the learning process. They provide educators with helpful feedback, allowing them to determine a student’s progress. They also provide students with feedback to help them achieve better outcomes.
Summative assessments evaluate student learning after a class unit. They compare students' knowledge and abilities to a specified standard or benchmark. A summative assessment gives teachers and students some idea of how much knowledge the student has retained.
Formative assessments evaluate how well a student learns while summative assessments are more concerned with how much a student has learned.
If designed correctly, formative assessments can help educators to identify and address the strengths and weaknesses of their students. They can then provide timely, effective, and proactive feedback to position each student for success. Formative assessments can also be combined with artificial intelligence for even greater personalization, a process known as formative adaptive learning.
Keeping a close eye on student progress helps ensure that students move towards defined learning goals. Teachers can then intervene and address issues before students get too far off-track. Data gathered from these assessments also helps teachers make more sound, informed decisions regarding their approach to class material.
Data from formative assessments can also give a clearer picture of each student's needs, leading to a more rigorous learning environment that challenges students to help them grow and succeed.
Analysis of formative assessment data allows educators to examine and adjust their instructional methods to consistently produce the desired results with their students through a personalized learning experience. This is especially helpful with larger class sizes since what works for some students won’t work for others.
Formative assessments allow teachers to use focused and highly targeted feedback to help their students improve and ensure that knowledge gaps are filled effectively. It also helps create a more reciprocal learning process between educators and students.
Student engagement is a critical element of any effective classroom activity. Formative assessments facilitate this engagement, connecting learning objectives to real-world situations and problems while feeding each student's natural curiosity.
Students need to be able to monitor and take responsibility for meeting their educational goals, which allows them to become self-regulated learners. Formative assessments provide an opportunity for students to do exactly that. They can review and correct their work independently, building independence and becoming more autonomous thinkers.
It's not just teachers who can clearly understand each student's strengths and weaknesses. Formative assessments provide students with the same information. They can then use that feedback to progress toward their educational goals, clearly showing which areas need improvement.
A formative assessment gives students more ownership over their learning. By working with students to set their own goals and providing them with an ongoing idea of their progress, they're more motivated and engaged. This can dramatically improve both performance and outcomes.
Teachers can utilize several types of formative assessments to get a better sense of the weaknesses and strengths of their students. Some of the most commonly used assessments include:
This assessment involves having students respond to three separate questions or statements to help them think about what they’ve learned in new, meaningful ways. These include;
Polls can be an excellent assessment that allows students to respond quickly while assessing their accuracy. They can be especially helpful for students who don't like talking in front of the class. They're also well-suited to a digital learning environment.
This can be a great end-of-the-day assessment that helps students reflect on what they’ve learned by answering a question in the form of a short essay. Topics for these papers could include:
These assessments can be a great way to expand the scope of an educational unit and help solidify the information that students learn. Some examples of these projects include:
Asking strategic, higher-order questions about a topic (like “why” and “how”) provides students with a chance to think more in-depth about a topic and also gives teachers a better way to discern the extent of their students’ understanding.
With the right technology, formative assessments can be a game-changer for students.
Here's where Sparkrock comes in. We not only offer purpose-built enterprise resource planning (ERP) software but also maintain a comprehensive student management and HRP solution. Secure, intuitive, and fully integrated, both tools are built specifically to address the needs and challenges of school districts.
Book a demo, and we'll show you.