Day 39 - Formative Assessment

Typically students in the comprehensive school have by now taken a quarterly benchmark and assigned grades to students.  Typically this is where students who have suffered bad experiences are saying "Here I go again, especially for those students who are failing for whatever reason.  This alternative approach is using a different approach to focus on student learning and not grades at this point in time. 

Traditionally, we have used assessments to measure how much our students have learned up to a particular point in time. This is called "assessment of learning" — or what we use to see whether our students are meeting standards set by the state, the district, or the classroom teacher. These summative assessments are conducted after a unit or certain time period to determine how much learning has taken place.  Although assessments of learning are important if we are to ascribe grades to students and provide accountability, teachers should also focus more on assessment for learning. These types of assessment — formative assessments — support learning during the learning process.  

Types of Assessment Strategies (Math Journal Focus on Literacy)
I have chosen a variety of quick ways for you to check for understanding and gather "evidence" of learning in the warrior math classroom.

• Summaries and Reflections Students stop and reflect, make sense of what they have heard or read, derive personal meaning from their learning experiences, and/or increase their metacognitive skills. These require that students use content-specific language.
  
  
• Lists, Charts, and Graphic Organizers Students will organize information, make connections, and note relationships through the use of various graphic organizers.
  
  
• Visual Representations of Information Students will use both words and pictures to make connections and increase memory, facilitating retrieval of information later on. This "dual coding" helps teachers address classroom diversity, preferences in learning style, and different ways of "knowing."
  
  
• Collaborative Activities Students have the opportunity to move and/or communicate with others as they develop and demonstrate their understanding of concepts.