Blog #8

Offer regular opportunities for formative assessment, such as quizzes and class discussion, to gauge student understanding and adjust instruction accordingly.  Formative assessment is one of those educational buzzwords that can make some teachers cringe.  It is an idea that has been strongly tied to the standards based learning (SBL) transition of the past several years, but whether your school is firmly embracing SBL, in the midst of the transition to SBL, or standing their ground against SBL, formative assessment is a must if students are expected to improve, grow, and become independent, lifelong learners.  This week I want to share a few thoughts that come from my experience (and struggle) to use formative assessment more effectively in my classes.

Assessment FOR learning vs. Assessment OF learning

Maybe you have seen this dichotomy before when someone has described the difference between Formative Assessment and Summative Assessment, but I think it bears repeating.  The purpose of a Summative Assessment is to gauge what students have learned at a particular point in time, usually the end of a chapter or unit.  Students have received teacher-guided instruction, opportunities to practice, and meaningful feedback so that they know the expectations and are prepared to meet them (hopefully 😊).  This is assessment OF the students’ learning.  Formative Assessments, on the other hand, are the actual opportunities to practice and receive feedback.  They provide the space for students to make mistakes without fear of how it might affect their grade.  They are assessments FOR learning because they offer a snapshot of where a student is in their learning, and what adjustments still need to be made to meet the standards and expectations.

The outcomes of formative assessments are FOR both the students and the teachers.  Students use the results as a marker for where they are on their learning journey.  Students can clarify what the expectations will be for the summative assessment, and determine where they need to focus their attention if they are not currently meeting those expectations.  The results should also be used by the teachers, not just to sort students based on a score, but to analyze what is being missed, why it is being missed, and by whom.  If our goal, as teachers, is to prepare students for success, we need more than numerical scores or letter grades to get there.  Formative assessments give teachers a glimpse of where students currently are along the road to success.  If several students struggle with a certain type of problem, a teacher can take time to reinforce the concept in a future lesson.  If particular students have difficulties with particular concepts, the teacher can offer additional one-on-one or small group assistance to help those students get back on track.  Formative assessments allow teachers to provide guidance that is much more informed, strategic and individualized based on the student’s demonstrated needs.

No Grades for Formative Assessment Tasks

This is an area of controversy for some teachers.  For other teachers, it is just a difficult idea to implement after years of grading and recording every point earned for everything a student does in your class.  I was the latter teacher.  I believed in the philosophy of not grading formative assessments, but I initially struggled with the implementation. 

For me, it helped to think of formative assessments as a way of gathering evidence.  If you think of a police drama, it takes most of the duration of the show, or even the season, to gather enough evidence so that the detective has a relatively accurate view of what happened, who did it, and why?  Additionally, there are usually several suspects because different people have messed up in different ways, but that does not make them all the criminal.  This is why detectives do not usually accuse a suspect of a crime based on a single piece of evidence, and when they do their case often falls apart.  I took this perspective with formative assessments.  As the teacher, I want to collect enough evidence before the “trial” (summative assessment) that I have a clear picture of what the student understands and what they have learned.  I want no surprises when I grade the summative assessment.  I want my “verdict” to “stick”.  And if there is a surprise for some extenuating reason, I still have other evidence that I can fall back on to make the final judgement.  To accomplish this, I have to go deeper than a percentage on a homework assignment.

The other thing that helped me make the shift away from grading formative tasks was the research.  During my master’s program (2017 – 2019) I had to take an assessment course.  We studied research conducted by Dylan Wiliam (published in the Second Handbook of Mathematics Teaching and Learning, edited by F. K. Lester Jr for Information Age Publishing in 2007) which suggests that when students are given a grade or a score for a task, they view it as a “final judgement” on their work.. Whether they did well or did poorly, the grade sends the message that the task is over, the verdict has been issued, and it is time to move on.  Students see themselves as either “winners” or “losers”, and often proceed in ways that reinforce that view.  Even if feedback is provided along with the score, students are accustomed to accepting the verdict and then setting aside the task, rarely paying attention to the suggestions for improvement.  I could see this exact behavior in my own students, and I wanted to break this pattern.  Instead of “branding” a student with a score, I wanted to encourage students to reflect on where they currently are, compare that to where they want to be, and strategize next steps to get there.  Providing only feedback instead of scores or grades coaxes students to be more willing to do that. 

When teachers get to this point in the conversation about not grading formative assessments, there are usually three common concerns that surface:

·      If students do not earn grades for formative assessments, they will not complete the assigned tasks.  This is a definite possibility.  I have seen it happen.  But with some intentional training, students begin to see that completing formative assessment tasks will prepare them to do well on summative assessment tasks.  However, this means the teacher needs to carefully consider how they design both their formative and summative assessments.  Practice must be at a comparable level of difficulty as the problems on the exam.  This doesn’t mean that we give students the problems that will be on the summative assessment, but it does mean that students should not be surprised by what is expected on the summative assessment.  If teachers can show students how different types of problems from the practices correlate to problems on the exam, most will make the connection and will take advantage of the formative practice.  If your students are not so intrinsically motivated, yet, teachers can also set expectations like not allowing a retake if the student is missing any formative work.

·      If students only earn grades for summative assessments, they are not going to have many grades for the grading period.  Again, this is a fair point.  The first year I shifted away from grading practice and only providing feedback on student work, I had a constant knot in my stomach.  After more than 30 years of recording a bazillion scores in my gradebook to “prove” the final grade, it just felt wrong to only have three or four grades in an entire semester.  I worried that if a parent or student challenged me about a grade, I would not have much foundation to stand on.  After that first year, I landed on some middle ground.  Most grading programs have a way to set a category of assignments to a 0% weight in the overall grade.  By making a formative category with 0%, it allows me to track the completion of formative work and make comments as needed.  The “scores” for these tasks are not included in the student’s overall grade, but the evidence can be seen leading up to the summative assessment, which WILL count toward the overall grade.  This helps students and parents to recognize issues and to take steps to address them before the grade is earned and recorded.  It also helps me to be more transparent about the evidence I am collecting and why the students earned the overall grade that they did.

·      How am I supposed to provide all of this feedback about student work? It is too time consuming! As the teacher, you do not need to be the sole source of feedback.  Certainly you should be providing some of it, so that you are informed of your students’ progress, and students are informed of your expectations.  But feedback can be provided through other sources as well.

o   Digital Feedback:  Using websites like DeltaMath (see blog #5) or Desmos Activities (see blogs #4 & #6) gives students immediate feedback on whether their answers are correct or not.  DeltaMath provides an explanation at the end of every problem to help students if they missed it.  Desmos activities can be used in Anonymize mode to show different answers to the class and discuss where misconceptions may lie. 

o   Peer Feedback:  When students engage in a Think-Pair-Share (blog #7) or a group review game (blog #7), they give and receive feedback.  Peers can provide a wealth of informal feedback to help students close gaps in their learning.  Be sure to include opportunities to do that when you are lesson planning.

o   Self-Feedback:  Teach students to analyze their own work, identify their own mistakes, and track their own progress.  Something as simple as providing answers to a homework assignment is a great opportunity for students to reflect on how they did.  Providing reflection questions after a quiz can also encourage students to gauge where they are and make a plan for continued progress.  Training students to do this in middle and high school will carry over into other aspects of life that will foster life-long learning and growth mindset.

More than just homework

If formative assessments are defined as opportunities for students to practice skills and receive feedback that helps them to progress toward meeting expectations, is that just a fancy way to say homework???  Maybe…could be…but doesn’t have to be.  Homework is the most obvious tool in the math teacher’s toolbox to give students the chance to practice math skills.  However, where I think homework may lack as a formative assessment is with the feedback component.  I can almost feel you rolling your eyes at the thought of providing feedback on every student’s homework.  So let me offer a suggestion to make the process more manageable.  I learned this approach to grading homework many, many years ago at a statewide math teacher’s conference.  It’s called 5 in 5.  It was originally presented as a way to give students an opportunity to earn homework points without going cross-eyed trying to grade them all, but I think it can be nicely adapted to a more formative approach.  Here is the idea:

5 in 5  Before your class enters, choose 3 problems from the homework that is due this period and 2 problems that were due in the previous class period and write them on the board.  Students have 5 minutes from the beginning of class to copy the work and answer for each of the 5 problems onto a separate sheet of paper.  At the end of the 5 minutes, students keep their homework and hand in the separate page with the 5 problems.  Some benefits of doing this are:

·      As a “bellringer” to start class, students are more motivated to get to class on time and get focused right away.

·      Choosing 3 problems from the homework due for this period encourages students to at least try all assigned problems because they do not know which problems will be chosen.  If they have already completed the problem, all they have to do is copy what they have from their homework to the separate piece of paper (something they can easily do in 5 minutes).

·      Choosing 2 problems that were due in the previous class period communicates to students that it is important to make corrections on their homework because problems may still get chosen.  It is a subtle reminder that they can continue to learn and grow even if they did not initially do the problem correctly.  Again, if their problem is corrected, all they have to do is copy what they have.

·      You, as the teacher, have a nice sample of 5 problems to consider for evidence of understanding without trying to check and provide feedback on all problems for every student.

·      Students can keep their completed homework in their notebook or on their tablet for future reference while the teacher can still collect evidence of learning.

I have modified this in different ways over the years, depending on the level of the students, the complexity of the problems, or the amount of work I expect them to show.  However you use it, it is a great method for getting a sample of student work without making yourself crazy.

In addition to homework, there are a plethora of activities and suggestions in my previous blogs that could be used for formative assessment.  Any task that provides students with a chance to practice and receive feedback is an assessment that furthers the students’ learning and ability to try, reflect, and adjust.  Homework does not have a monopoly on giving students the opportunity to practice.  So get creative and make learning fun for your classes.

Please understand, using formative assessments in your math classes will NOT happen overnight.  It is quite a process to design/curate appropriate formative assessment tasks that adequately correspond to the tasks students will be expected to do on summative assessments.  It will take time and energy to make the shift from the habits and mindsets that have been well-established in your teaching routine.  But I do believe the shift is necessary and worth it.  Formative assessments give students the space to make mistakes, learn, grow, and take risks, without fear of tanking their grade.  The focus slowly gets placed on learning more than points, and that is a good thing.  So, start slow, start small, start with a teaching partner, whatever you are able to do, but DO START!  And if you are already up to your eyeballs in this transition, HANG IN THERE!!  Stay consistent, keep reiterating the reason for what you are doing, and continue to redirect students who ask, “So what is my grade?”  Trust me, they WILL catch on, and so will you.  You got this, and I am here to help if you need support.  Don’t hesitate to send me an email if you have questions.  Until next week…