research based formative assessment strategies

Formative Assessment Strategies: A teacher's guide

October 29, 2021

How can you move learning forward using formative assessment strategies in your classroom?

Main, P (2021, October 29). Formative Assessment Strategies: A teacher's guide. Retrieved from https://www.structural-learning.com/post/formative-assessment-strategies-a-teachers-guide

What are Formative Assessment Strategies?

Formative assessment is an ongoing process used by teachers and students for teaching and learning ; to improve student understanding of planned disciplinary learning outcomes and help students to become self-directed learners . The main purpose of formative assessment is to monitor the process of learning and to provide ongoing feedback that can help learners to improve their learning and help instructors to improve their instructions . More precisely, formative assessments:

help learners recognise their weaknesses and strengths and work on areas that need improvement;
help instructors identify where learners are struggling and dealing with the problems.

Hattie (2009) conducted a meta-analysis of over 800 studies investigating factors that influence student attainment and found feedback to be the most influential factor. This finding has often been wrongly used to justify teachers needing to spend more time marking . However, this is just one of three forms of feedback that Hattie was referring to. He also considered the impact of feedback from students to teachers and from one student to another.

Feedback is evidently an important part of learning. This article provides an overview of Dylan Wiliam’s secrets to effective feedback (Wiliam, 2016).

Feedback is only successful if students use it to improve their performance and we cannot take it for granted that feedback of any type will achieve this. Research has shown that it is possible for feedback to be detrimental to learning when compared to students receiving no feedback at all. To avoid this situation, Wiliam (2016) shares the following advice.

In most cases, unlike summative assessments , formative assessments in schools are low stakes , having low or no point value; however, these ungraded assessments are considered to be highly valuable to help students enhance their performance and to help teachers identify what students understood, and what they didn't. Often, the purpose of feedback is to enable a student to achieve something in the future that they are currently not able to achieve. In this case, feedback should focus on improving the student rather than the piece of work.

Sometimes, the purpose of the feedback may be to inform the teacher about what their class knows and to influence their lesson planning . In this case, notes in the teacher’s planner may be more appropriate than notes on every individual piece of work. The time spent marking work and giving feedback can be much more productive if you consider the purpose of the feedback before you decide the best approach to take.

Examples of Formative Assessment Strategies

Use students’ work to understand where they are starting from and give them feedback that they can use from this starting point. The effectiveness of feedback will be limited by the task that has been set; if it is cleverly designed to illuminate students’ understanding , the feedback that can be given will be more effective and more accessible for the student . Formative assessment strategies help teachers determine if more instruction is needed. Using formative assessments in the classroom prevents both teachers and students from getting any surprises in the form of poor final grades. Some of the most significant formative assessment strategies are:

1. Analysis of Students Work

Students' homework, quizzes and standardised tests can be used as evidence of student learning. When teachers carry out the analysis of student performance they get knowledge about:

A student's current level of skills , attitude and knowledge about the subject matter;

A student's strengths and weaknesses ;

A student's need for special assistance ; and

How to modify their teaching methods and make their teaching more effective in the future.

Visual tools as a formative assessment strategy

2. Strategic Questioning Strategies

Strategic questioning methods can be used with the students as daily classroom practice. The main aim of questioning is the academic progress of students. Effective formative assessment practices involve asking learners to answer higher-order questions such as “how” and “why.”

3. Think-Pair-Share

It is one of the simplest formative assessment strategies . As a classroom practice, the teacher asks a question, and students write down their responses. Then students sit in pairs to engage in effective classroom discussions about their answers . The teacher moves around the classroom and gains insight into the student learning process by listening to students' responses. Then, the students share their answers with the whole class.

Students engaged in a formative assessment strategy using the thinking blocks

4. Admit/ Exit Tickets

An Admit / Exit Ticket provides a simple but useful formative assessment type. An Exit Ticket is a small index card or piece of paper, on which they provide an accurate interpretation of the current topic taught in the class, and then they discuss more of the topic. The learners deposit their exit slips when leaving the classroom. Admit Tickets are used as the students enter in the class. They are used to check student learning by answering questions about the homework or what was taught the day before.

Exit tickets as a formative assessment strategy

5. One-Minute Papers

One-minute papers are mostly carried out before the day ends. They provide an opportunity for students to answer a brief question . Then, these papers are collected and assessed by the teacher to gain insight into the student learning process . One-minute papers provide the formative assessment practices that are found to be more beneficial when done on a regular basis.

Dylan Wiliam's Formative Assessment Strategies

According to a well-known British educationalist and Emeritus Professor of Educational Assessment at the University College London, Dylan Wiliam , 'formative assessment' defines all the processes by which learners and teachers use information about the achievement of students to make changes in the students learning that enhance their achievement . Some of the great formative assessment strategies proposed by Dylan Wiliam are:

1. Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning intentions

Research suggests that the teachers need to:

Describe learning intentions at the beginning of the lesson.
Provide success criteria and learning intentions in the simple language.
Use keywords on posters to explain, describe, discuss and evaluate learning.
Use writing frames and lesson plans judiciously.
Use annotated examples of various standards to “flesh out” rubrics for the chapter tests.
Give opportunities to the students to construct their interim tests .

Solo Taxonomy used to share learning intentions

2. Engineering effective classroom discussions , tasks and activities that elicit evidence of learning

It means that the questioning in the classroom must encourage the process of thinking and provide evidence to inform teaching. Teachers can improve the process of questioning through:

Attending specialised training for educators and generating questions with their colleagues;
Thinking low-order vs. high-order , not open vs. closed;
Giving sufficient wait time to the students.

Teachers need to discourage the I-R-E ( initiation-response-evaluation ) by:

Regularly using student response techniques through mini whiteboards, ABCD cards, and exit passes.
applying the 'no hands up' rule (except to ask a question).

Providing feedback that moves learners forward

Dylan Wiliam gave practical advice to educators that their feedbacks are said to be successful only if they improve students’ learning proces s. Then, it depends upon students' capacity to understand and accept the feedbacks and show a willingness to act on them. Successful feedback has a motivational and interpersonal element. Effective feedback suggests actions learners can apply rather than providing a negative retrospective critique.

A common goal of feedback must be to improve the students’ capacity to create high quality work , not just to improve their task. This characteristic of formative assessments connects it to self-regulation and metacognition and Rosenshine’s concepts about switching from guided practice to independent practice. Successful learners possess the ability to link their task with the success criteria and create their regular self-improvement feedback narrative.

Provide feedback in the form of a task to ensure that students actively engage with the feedback they have been given. For example, give students just enough information about an error they have made so that they can identify it for themselves (e.g. ‘one of the causes you identified is incorrect’, or ‘there are three incorrect answers’). Students should spend at least as much time responding to feedback as the teacher has spent providing it; making feedback into detective work can ensure students take time to reflect on their original piece of work.

Activating students as learning resources for one another

T his is an important formative assessment strategy p roposed by Wiliam. According to Wiliam's advice for teachers, the frequency , quality and ratio, of student interactions with the knowledge in hand can significantly increase if teachers create strong routines in which students help other students to learn in a serious structured way. It is not easy for the teachers to engage in conversations on the performance of students in each class but students can be engaged in meaningful conversations with one another to support the process of learning .

At this stage of formative assessment activities ‘think pair share‘ becomes very strong. A high volume of peer feedback and peer-to-peer interactivity is found to be very useful if teachers apply a strong process to evaluate students’ responses for quality and accuracy. There are so many ways of ac tivating students as learning resources for one another. Some of these ways are:

learners checking answers of their partner,
learners using the structured dialogues for rehearsing explanations and arguments and practising the use of language .
Students' pairs verify the work of their partner using a factsheet, mark schemas and exemplars as reference.

Activating students as learning resources for one another using mind mapping

Activating students as owners of their learning

Owning one's is an important part of metacognition and strong self-regulation . Like any other developmental process, these traits of effective learning can be nurtured in students by creating expectations and good routines . Teachers can play a crucial role in making students understand where they are on the curriculum planning and where they want to be. Teachers can do this by:

providing students with access to the plan of instruction, syllabus and long-term topic plans before teaching them the details;
setting milestones to check pupil progress. By doing so, teachers enable students to plan their next steps and make them increasingly independent.
demonstrating performance exemplars at different levels of success up to a high level so learners can compare their levels and move forward to achieve their learning targets.
setting clear relational models for building conceptual schema .

If a student understands for himself what he must do to improve himself and knows that he can achieve success by applying effort to his self-determined objectives, then he can gain confidence that brings him even more success . Dedicating time to equip students with the skills of self-assessment is likely to be more productive in the longer term, save teachers’ time, and improve students’ ability to reflect and learn independently .

The skill of self-assessment can be scaffolded: starting with feedback on anonymous work, then peers’ work, and then the student’s own work. The type of feedback required will depend on the subject, the task, and the purpose of the feedback.

Embedding formative assessment with the Universal Thinking Framework

Adapting Formative Assessment Strategies for different abilities

Adapting formative assessment strategies for different abilities is essential in creating an inclusive classroom learning environment that caters to the diverse needs of all students.

By considering the varying levels of skills and attainment levels among students, teachers can design assessments that not only evaluate student progress but also encourage effective classroom discussions and foster higher-order thinking skills.

One approach to adapting formative assessment strategies is to incorporate thinking blocks or tiered activities that challenge students at their individual skill levels while still addressing the same learning objectives.

These activities can be designed to gradually increase in complexity, allowing students with varying abilities to actively participate in the learning process.

Establishing a dialogue between teachers and students is another crucial aspect of adapting formative assessment strategies. By engaging in open communication with students, teachers can better understand their individual needs, address any misconceptions, and provide targeted feedback. This can also help alleviate teacher workload by focusing on the areas where students require the most support.

In conclusion, adapting formative assessment strategies for different abilities is vital in creating an inclusive and engaging learning environment.

By carefully designing assessments that cater to varying skill levels, fostering open communication, and providing targeted feedback, teachers can ensure that all students have the opportunity to succeed and develop essential higher-order thinking skills .

Embedding formative assessment tools

Many of the schools that we work with have been utilising the mental modelling technique to find out what pupils know. The block structures allow children to dig deeper into the curriculum and figure out how all the parts fit together. As they build, they articulate their understanding to one another.

This opens up opportunities for responsive teaching . The block structures reflect what the students think which means that we now have access to their mental models. Teaching staff can use these block structures for higher-order questions.

Using big picture questions , educators can use the models as a launchpad for deeper thinking. Unlike standardised tests, the mental models are malleable and change as the students understanding progresses. Embedding these opportunities into curriculum design means that educators always get the inside picture of what a pupil really knows.

Instructors can use these insights to provide detailed, actionable feedback when the learner needs it most. The added benefit of this pedagogy is that it promotes rich classroom dialogue which over time, builds a positive classroom environment.

Using Multiple Choice Questions for formative assessment

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A Summary of Evidence Based Formative Assessment Strategies

Dylan Wiliam and Paul Black originally defined formative assessment as: “encompassing all those activities undertaken by teachers, and/or their students, which provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged” (Black and Wiliam 1998). Formative assessment strategies are central to effective and responsive teaching and learning. They are also linked to the different stages of the learning process in addition to curriculum planning, design and delivery.

Formative assessment involves a range of evidence-informed strategies used in the classroom across the curriculum with learners of different ages, and can be applied across all subjects. Formative assessment can help the teacher and student understand what needs to be learned and how this can be achieved. A teacher can use a range of strategies to support their students to make progress, and the learner can embrace formative assessment strategies to monitor and reflect on their own progress and act on feedback provided by the teacher and/or their peers.

Dylan Wiliam and Siobhan Leahy have written extensively about five key formative assessment strategies (Embedded Formative Assessment, 2011). The five strategies promoted by Wiliam and Leahy are:

Clarifying, sharing and understanding learning intentions and success criteria
Engineering effective discussions, tasks, and activities that elicit evidence of learning
Providing feedback that moves learners forward
Activating students as learning resources for one another
Activating students as owners of their own learning.

For each of these strategies a range of techniques can be deployed in the classroom. Formative assessment strategies take place during the learning process in contrast to summative assessment that focuses on a final and high stakes exam or test. The aim of these strategies is to continually help students make progress and develop.

As with all approaches in education, these strategies can either be implemented effectively, badly or by becoming ‘ lethal mutations’ . In such situations, evidence-based strategies are rushed, misunderstood or misapplied to the point of no longer resembling the original research or desired outcome.

In order to avoid misconceptions and mutations, teachers and school leaders need to carefully consider the evidence base and select formative assessment strategies and techniques suitable for their context. This must be followed by considered and meaningful review and reflection.

To find out more about formative assessment strategies in the classroom, for effective teaching and learning, you can sign up to our upcoming webinar here or, if you are based in the United Arab Emirates, you can sign up for the in person workshop in Dubai here . The webinar and workshop will be led by Kate Jones, Senior Associate for Teaching and Learning and author or Wiliam and Leahy’s Five Formative Assessment Strategies: In Action (2021).

References:

Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education, 5, 7-74. doi:10.1080/0969595980050102

Embedding Formative Assessment. Practical Techniques for the Classroom. Dylan Wiliam and Siobhan Leahy. (2011).

Do formative assessments cover the support listed in section F of a CYP EHCP? Or should there be a separate graduated response for those interventions? Experiencing an uncommunicative school.

A theoretical statements are available but translating into a curriculum is required. Formative is for student self learning hence there needs to be a mechanism to have a graded approach and chance that retake an assessment it required.

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Enhancing Learning Through Formative Assessment: Evidence-Based Strategies for Implementing Learner Reflection in Higher Education

First Online: 30 June 2023

Cite this chapter

Li-Shih Huang 11 ,
Raj Khatri 12 &
Amjad Alhemaid 12

Part of the book series: Knowledge Studies in Higher Education ((KSHE,volume 11))

377 Accesses

Reflection is irrefutably one of the key concepts of education theory, and its importance and benefits have been widely explored and recognized across disciplines. The ability of learners to reflect critically through control over their own learning and construct knowledge and of instructors to modify practices that promote transformative learning (Mezirow, Transformative dimensions of adult learning. Jossey-Bass, 1991) and support self-regulated, autonomous learners have been recognized as essential in higher education. However, a review of the literature from the past few decades shows that the learner-, situation-, and context-dependent nature of reflection remains obscure to most educators in both implementing reflective learning and assessing reflective thinking. The key challenge in using learner reflection for assessment for learning lies in measuring transformative learning, owing to a lack of “explicit and direct attention to the process of evaluating [it]” (Cranton & Hoggan, Handbook of transformative learning: Theory, research, and practice. Jossey-Bass, 2012, p. 531). Within the context of two institutions that prioritize integrating experiential learning (Kolb, Experiential learning: Experience as the source of learning and development. Prentice-Hall, 1984), where critical analysis and synthesis of observations and reflections derived from concrete learning experiences are central and fundamental, this chapter aims to connect insights from theory, research, and direct experience to practices instructors can use to inform their own teaching by addressing thorny issues pertaining to implementing and assessing reflection. These insights transcend any single task, course, or program in higher education.

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Huang, LS., Khatri, R., Alhemaid, A. (2023). Enhancing Learning Through Formative Assessment: Evidence-Based Strategies for Implementing Learner Reflection in Higher Education. In: Stephen, J.S., Kormpas, G., Coombe, C. (eds) Global Perspectives on Higher Education. Knowledge Studies in Higher Education, vol 11. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31646-3_5

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Getting smart collective, impact update, the research base for formative assessment.

By Mary Ryerse and Susan Brookhart

Formative assessment is at the forefront of many education conversations and, at present, many accept intuitively that it’s an important part of the learning process.

Yet, how do we know formative assessment actually works? In this blog, we unpack some of the research base underlying the practice of formative assessment.

For those less familiar with the practice, it is important to note that formative assessment is a process in which students and teachers work together to improve learning. Both students and teachers are active participants in the process as they generate, interpret, and use evidence of learning to 1) aim for learning goals, 2) apply criteria to the work they produce, and 3) decide on next steps.

To summarize the process, there is a formative learning cycle which encourages students to repeatedly ask these three questions:

Where am I going?
Where am I now?
Where to next?

Further, formative assessment is not a particular kind of test, or marks or grades, but rather an ongoing practice.

Below, we have synthesized key information about research behind formative assessment’s effectiveness.

Foundational Research Base for Formative Assessment

The original research base on formative assessment is most typically traced back to the 1998 publication Assessm ent and Classroom Learning (Black & Wiliam, 1998), the first widely cited review of literature on formative assessment in the English language. The researchers found “firm evidence” that formative assessment can work, but also noted that there was not much formative assessment happening in conventional teaching practices (more on that later).

Much of the research measures whether a particular practice is working by the “effect size.”

Definition: “ Effect size is the difference between treatment group and comparison group expressed in standard deviation units.” Generally speaking, the higher the effect size the stronger the evidence of impact.

In the Black and Wiliam review, the authors cited prior studies reporting effect sizes that ranged from 0.40 and 0.70 for formative assessment practice, a relatively strong indicator. Evidence for those numbers came mostly from a 1986 review of formative assessment in special education titled Effects of Systematic Formative Evaluation: A Meta-Analysis (Fuchs & Fuchs, 1986).

In an effort to increase classroom practice, Black and Wiliam also created a “practitioner’s summary,” Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards through Classroom Assessment , to go along with the original pub.

More Recent Reports and Critiques.

A number of studies followed the foundational research of Black and Wiliam. These more recent reports justified a need for more research, a critique of current research and a need for content-area-specific research.

A call for research. More recently, Formative Assessment: A Meta-Analysis and a Call for Research , (Kingston & Nash, 2011) estimated the effect size in the 0.20 to 0.30 range. Regardless, the findings point to a significant level of impact.

A critical review. There is some criticism of research that lumps all formative assessment together because formative assessment is so complex. It encompasses many different practices and usually takes place in a context of other changes, as well (for example, a change to more student-centered learning in general). Bennett’s Formative Assessment: A Critical Review (2011) is the most widely cited and best articulated of the critiques.

A look across content areas. It may be that in the future, the best evidence of the effects of formative assessment on learning will be accumulated through studies within content areas, which removes some of the complexity among a group of studies. In Formative Assessment and Writing (Graham, Hiebert, & Harris, 2015), a review of formative assessment specifically assessing the effects on students learning to write, was conducted and found average effect sizes of 0.87, 0.62, 0.58, and 0.38 for feedback from adults, self, peers, and computers, respectively. These effect sizes point to the importance of emphasizing specific content area feedback and assessment.

Closely Connected: Effects of Feedback

Additionally, evidence for the effects of formative assessment also comes from the much larger literature on the effects of feedback. Feedback is one of the foundational aspects of formative assessment. Recent reviews of the feedback literature include the following:

The Power of Feedback (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). Summarizing previous meta-analyses of the effects of feedback, this review found an overall effect size of 0.79, which placed it among the top 5 or 10 influences of any kind on achievement.
Effects of Feedback in a Computer-Based Learning Environment on Students’ Learning Outcomes (Van der Kleij, Feskens, & Eggen, 2015). This review reported effect sizes of 0.49 for elaborated feedback (feedback that includes explanations, additional material, and/or suggestions for next steps) in the context of computer-based instruction.
Focus on Formative Feedback (Shute, 2008). This report provided a more descriptive review of the literature on task-level, formative feedback, and four summary tables of recommendations for practice based on the research reviewed.

Policy Brief

It has been demonstrated that students become active agents in their educational process as they learn how to use feedback, set goals, monitor their own progress and select strategies that move their own learning forward. According to Formative Assessment: Improving Learning in Secondary Classrooms , formative assessment practice has been shown to be highly effective in raising the level of student attainment, increasing equity of student outcomes and improving students’ ability to learn.

The above-mentioned policy brief is an executive-summary-style brief of a larger study (OECD, 2005) that was part of OECD’s “What Works in Innovation in Education” initiative. The report reviews international research as well as OECD’s case study findings, presents case studies from several schools in eight participating countries, and includes English, French, and German literature reviews on formative assessment in their respective contexts and research traditions.

Additional findings include that schools which use formative assessment show not only general gains in academic achievement but also particularly high gains for previously underachieving students.

It is worth noting that teachers help students accomplish the above and move learning forward. According to the same OECD report, teachers who engage in formative assessment report a changed classroom culture, clarity regarding goals, varied instructional practices and more positive interactions with students.

As we see that the more general research has revealed positive effects and benefits of formative assessment, it seems clear that more specific research will only refine and improve the practice.

For more, see:

Scaling Formative Assessment: The How I Know Project
Keys to Success for Formative Assessment: A Professional Learning Guide
Reflections on How I Know

Susan Brookhart is a formative assessment expert who speaks, writes and consults through Brookhart Enterprises LLC (susanbrookhart.com).

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27 easy formative assessment strategies for gathering evidence of student learning

New Clothes
Dos and Don’ts
Three Common Misunderstandings
Yes/No Chart
Three Questions
Explain What Matters
Big Picture
Venn Diagram
Self-Directed Response

Combining these 10 with 10 others we’ve blogged about in the past gives teachers 20 great formative assessment strategies for checking on student learning. Be sure to click through to learn more about these formative assessment strategies.

The Popsicle Stick
The Exit Ticket
The Whiteboard
Think-Pair-Share
Two Stars and a Wish
Carousel Brainstorming
Basketball Discussions

Want more? Here are seven more strategies you can use to elicit evidence of student learning.

Entrance Tickets. We’ve blogged about and explained the Exit Ticket, so why not have an Entrance Ticket? Here, the teacher asks a question at the start of a lesson, and students write their responses on index cards or strips of paper. Answers are used to assess initial understanding of something to be discussed in that day’s lesson or as a short summary of understanding of the previous day’s lesson. The teacher designs the lesson around the fact that information on student learning will be coming in at the start of the lesson and can be used to improve the teaching and learning in that lesson. Be sure to write the question so it is easily interpreted and analyzed, allows time for you and/or the students to analyze the responses, and leaves space for you to adjust the lesson, if needed.
Keep the Question Going. With this formative assessment strategy, you’ll ask one student a question and then ask another student if that answer seems reasonable or correct. Then, ask a third student for an explanation of why there is an agreement or not. This helps keep all the students engaged because they must be prepared to either agree or disagree with the answers given and provide explanations.
30-Second Share. With this strategy, students take a turn to report something learned in a lesson for up to 30 seconds each. Connections to the learning targets or success criteria are what you’ll be looking for in the language used by the student. Make this a routine at the end of a lesson so all students have the opportunity to participate, share insights, and clarify what was learned.
Parking Lot. This is an underused strategy for students and one that can surface questions before learning, as well as during and after. This tool also offers an anonymous place for questions that may be directly related to the content or tangential to the current topic and provide insight into student thinking. Simply save a spot on your whiteboard to write down ideas or questions that aren’t completely relevant in the moment but should be revisited later.
One-Minute Paper. This might be considered a type of exit ticket as it is typically done near the end of the day. Ask your students, either individually or with a partner, to respond in writing to a single prompt. Typical prompts include:
Most important learning from the day and why
Most surprising concept and why
Most confusing topic and why
Something I think might appear on a test or quiz and why
3-2-1. At the end of the learning, this strategy provides students a way to summarize or even question what they just learned. Three prompts are provided for students to respond to:
3 things you didn’t know before
2 things that surprised you about the topic
1 thing you want to start doing with what you’ve learned
Assessment Reflection. This strategy is a post-assessment reflection completed individually first and then shared in a small group. After an assessment, the teacher provides a list of questions so learners can reflect on their assessment experience. During group discussion, ideas are collected as new information to support students to better prepare for and engage in future assessments. Consider the following or similar questions. You might also use strategies such as Plus, Minus, Interesting, or Plus/Delta.
How engaged were you with this assessment? Why?
What did you feel most confident about? Why?
What did you do that led to your success or confidence?
What was the most difficult part of this assessment? Why?
What would you do differently next time?
What was the most confusing? Why?
What do you know about the topic that the assessment didn’t allow you to show?

All 27 of these formative assessment strategies are simple to administer and free or inexpensive to use. They’ll provide you with the evidence of student learning you need to make lesson plan adjustments and keep learning on target and moving forward. They’ll also give your students valuable information so they can adjust their learning tactics and know where to focus their energies.

If you’re not quite sure where to get started, the following discussion questions can help.

Questions for teachers

How do you use formative assessment data to inform instructional decisions?
How can formative assessment strategies foster a learning environment of collaboration and engagement?
How do formative assessment strategies elicit evidence of student learning?
What is one strategy you could try tomorrow and why?

Questions for leaders

How do you use formative assessment data to drive school-wide instructional academic decisions?
How can you model formative assessment strategies in staff meetings, PLCs, and meetings with teachers?
What are three formative assessment strategies you could bring to your teachers and staff? Why do you feel these would be most effective at your school?

Get more formative assessment tips and tricks in our e-book “Making it work: How formative assessment can supercharge your practice.”

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Formative assessment isn’t new. But as our education system changes, our approaches to any instructional strategy must evolve. Learn how to put formative assessment to work in your classroom.

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Revisiting Dylan Wiliam’s Five Brilliant Formative Assessment Strategies.

In many of Dylan Wiliam’s talks and publications he references five ‘key strategies’ that support the implementation of effective formative assessment. The five strategies each get a chapter in his excellent book Embedding Formative Assessment (2011) which builds on the work he developed with other colleagues in the 90s and 00s.

The five strategies were expressed as early as 2005:

Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning intentions
Engineering effective classroom discussions, tasks and activities that elicit evidence of learning
Providing feedback that moves learners forward
Activating students as learning resources for one another
Activating students as owners of their own learning

Leahy, Lyon, Thompson and Wiliam (2005).

Very commonly, Wiliam presents these ideas in this helpful table, linking the strategies to core assessment concepts:

In my work as a consultant and teacher trainer, I give a lot of ‘evidence-informed’ advice to teachers. Of late, this has been influenced largely by discussions about a knowledge-rich curriculum and my reading of Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction, cognitive load theory, and various other papers linking cognitive psychology to classroom practice.

However, it occurred to me recently that most of this overlaps entirely with Wiliam’s five strategies and that is what I want to explore here. To some extent, schools and teachers often feel they have have ‘done AfL to death’ in countless CPD sessions over the last 15 years. Time was when you couldn’t get a job unless you said ‘AfL’ about 12 times in an interview. Sadly, my sense is that the wisdom at the heart of Wiliam’s ideas about responsive teaching/formative assessment gets washed out either a) by the delusion that the strategies are already embedded in day-to-day practice or b) by the sense that this is a box ticked and people are really ready to move to the new thing. Truth be told, a lot of ‘AfL’ was and is a mile away from the formative assessment practice Wiliam is talking about.

Essentially, I feel that, among the important things every teacher should know, the five strategies should be there, part of the core curriculum for teacher development. Here’s how I see it all connecting:

1.Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning intentions

Wiliam says ‘if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll never get there’. This is largely about curriculum planning. I read ‘learning intentions’ as meaning: what do we want all students to know and be able to do? In the detail, this means spelling out what knowledge – in all its forms – they should have and how to apply this knowledge in new contexts. It chimes perfectly with the wave of work being done around curriculum design. It also resonates with the strand of Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction around sequencing concepts, providing models and appropriate scaffolding.

It also means ‘what does excellence look like?’. This connects to ideas about assessment and comparative judgement and teachers knowing the standards. Significantly, the implication from Wiliam is that in ‘clarifying, understanding and sharing’ – teachers, students and their peers all need to know both the knowledge requirements and the criteria for excellence in any performed task. This goes far, far beyond writing a mandatory one-line LO on the board at the start of every lesson! (Aarrghh!). It suggests a lot of very explicit exposition and discussion about the target knowledge and the features of any endeavour that constitute ever increasing degrees of success.

This, in turn, feeds into ideas about self-regulation and metacognition. Successful learners will be good at self-regulation, planning and monitoring their progress towards learning goals in a deliberate self-directed manner. Knowing the learning intentions very well is essential for that process to work.

So the links here are numerous: curriculum, knowledge, standards, self-regulation, scaffolding, modelling.

2. Engineering effective classroom discussions, tasks and activities that elicit evidence of learning

In some ways, this ‘strategy’ is a one-line summary of most of the rest of Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction . ‘Discussions, tasks and activities’ covers a lot of possibilities. At the centre of it is the idea of ‘responsive teaching’. Instructional teaching has to be highly interactive so that teachers are getting feedback from their students about how well their schemas for the material in hand are forming and how fluent they are becoming retrieving and using what they’ve learned. The challenge for teachers is to involve as many students as possible which leads to the need for good questioning routines and good knowledge-check routines where the ratio of student involvement is high and the information received has a good diagnostic component.

Rosenshine talks about the need for checking for understanding and asking lots of questions in a probing style. Wiliam focuses on question design – including good diagnostic multiple choice questions – and the role of all-student response techniques.

Links: Rosenshine’s Principles of Instruction. Shimamura’s ‘Generate-Evaluate’ model. Ideas about retrieval practice. Nuthall’s ideas about ‘hidden lives’ and the idea that we can’t be remotely confident about learning taking place until we check – now, and again later.

3. Providing feedback that moves learners forward

Feedback is a thorny issue, woven into discussions about the use of formative and summative assessment, marking and workload, grading and the value of data as a tool to improve learner outcomes. The key in Wiliam’s work is the emphasis on moving learners forward . It’s this thinking that informed the ideas I expressed in this ‘ feedback as actions ‘ post.

Some of the key messages that Wiliam offers in relation to feedback that I cite very often are:

Feedback is only successful if students’ learning improves – and this depends on their capacity to understand it and inclination to accept and act on it. It’s got an interpersonal, motivational element that can’t be brushed aside. Giving feedback isn’t a purely technical, objective task – although it does have to suggest actions students can actually take rather than offering a nebulous retrospective critique.
The goal is to change the students’ capacity to produce better work, not just to improve their work. Austin’s Butterfly is wonderful – because it shows what effective feedback can achieve – but Austin has only truly benefitted if, later, he is more able to ‘look like a scientist’ or draw beautiful butterflies without feedback: he needs to be able to generate his own feedback and become more independent.

This links formative assessment to metacognition and self-regulation and Rosenshine’s ideas about moving from guided to independent practice. If we’re still reliant on external feedback to tell us if we’ve succeeded (SatNav style), then we’ve still got a long way to go. Effective learners can link their work to the success criteria and generate their own ongoing self-correcting feedback narrative.

Links: Ethic of excellence, Rosenshine guided to independent practice, self-regulation.

4. Activating students as learning resources for one another

I think this is the feature of Wiliam’s five strategies that deserves more attention. All too often teachers create major bottlenecks by forcing all classroom interactions to pass through them. However, if teachers develop strong routines where students support each other’s learning in a serious structured manner, then the ratio, quality and frequency of student interactions with the knowledge in hand can increase significantly. We can’t have a dialogue with every student at once but they can all be involved in meaningful dialogues with each other to support the process of working out ‘where the learner is’ and ‘how to get to where the learner is going’. This is where disciplined ‘ think pair share ‘ becomes so powerful.

Wiliam cites Slavin in showing that well-designed collaborative learning can yield significant gains – but it has to be done such that everyone is learning. There are so many ways to do this e.g students checking their partners’ answers using all manner of quizzing formats and generative processes and elaborative-interrogative questions (why? how?). Pairs are probably the most efficient and effective use of this strategy – because of the ease of switching in and out of the interactions. If one person in a pair acts as the verifier for the other, using exemplars, fact sheets, mark schemes as a reference, the extent of retrieval practice and feedback can be increased hugely. Another example might be using structured dialogues for practising the use of language or rehearsing explanations and arguments. Provided that there is a strong process for evaluating students’ responses for accuracy and quality, a high volume of peer-to-peer interactivity is powerful.

Links: Hattie’s ‘reciprocal teaching’, Shimamura’s ‘think it, say it, teach it’, Slavin’s collaborative learning, Sumeracki and Weinstein on elaborative interrogative questions and retrieval practice.

5. Activating students as owners of their own learning

In all honesty, I find that implementation of the strategy behind this feel-good-phrase, often falls into the dust of ‘noble intent’ rather than delivering something tangible. However, it is actually highly actionable and links directly to many other ideas. ‘Owning your own learning’ is at the heart of strong self-regulation and metacognition: setting learning goals, planning, monitoring and evaluating success in tasks links to those goals; forming effective schemata that take account of big-picture questions and themes that inform subsequent conscious rehearsal and elaboration. However, these ‘goals’ are not broad brush life goals; they are learning goals – the next steps in improving writing fluency, science knowledge, confidence with maths and languages, physical fitness etc.

The point is that these characteristics of effective learning can be fostered by setting up good routines and expectations. Teachers can help students to know where they are going and where they are on the curriculum journey. This can be supported by:

giving students access to long-term topic plans, the syllabus, the wide scope overview before diving down into the details;
setting out milestones in the progress journey so that students can take their bearings and plan their own next steps through appropriate forms of practice, becoming increasingly independent.
setting out clear relational models for conceptual schema building – as per Shimamura’s Relate in MARGE .
providing exemplars of performance at various levels of success up to a high/exceptional level so students can compare their own work against a scale and see for themselves where they are and what short-run learning goals might be achievable to move forward.

If a student knows for themself what they need to do in order to improve and gains the experience of being able to achieve success through applying effort to these self-determined goals, then they begin a positive upward spiral of confidence building, growth mindset-inducing, self-regulation that fuels even more success.

Links: Rosenshine: practice; Shimamura: Relate; Growth mindset; self-regulation.

To some extent I feel that the issue has been that ‘AfL’ or even ‘formative assessment’ has been too broad a term; too much of a catch-all, thereby allowing various degrees of corruption and dilution to take root. I think that it’s when you get into understanding and deploying the five separate strategies that it finds form. That’s the understanding of formative assessment that teachers need. It’s powerful stuff, right there, where it’s been for years.

Key References:

Wiliam, D., & Thompson, M. (2007). Integrating assessment with instruction: what will it take to make it work? In C. A. Dwyer (Ed.), The future of assessment: shaping teaching and learning (pp. 53-82). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Wilam, D (2011) Embedded Formative Assessment. Solution Tree Press.

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5 Strategies for formative assessment using tech tools

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5 Evidence-based formative assessment strategies using tech tools

By integrating evidence-based formative assessment strategies, educators gain a clear picture of student comprehension during lessons, allowing them to make timely instructional adjustments. Additionally, the inclusion of technology in the classroom has significantly enhanced the effectiveness of formative assessments. In this blog post, we’ll delve into formative assessment benefits and explore how digital tools can facilitate real-time evaluation, offering educators valuable tools to optimize teaching strategies.

Why is formative assessment important?

Formative assessment fosters active student participation and provides immediate insights into their understanding. Mastering formative assessment strategies will help your students showcase their knowledge of and reflect on the material taught while providing the teacher with insight into their understanding. When teachers ask students to demonstrate their understanding through formative assessment during a lesson regularly, students become active in the learning experience and are able to cement or apply their knowledge. Through this instant feedback, teachers can tailor their instruction on the spot to immediately meet the needs of their students based on these insights.

How to use technology for formative assessments

We know the instructional value of consistent formative assessment in the classroom, but it has become a demanding practice to implement regularly for teachers with competing priorities. That is… until smart devices came into the picture. In fact, Ian Beatty at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst was one of the first to illustrate how personal smart devices in the hands of teachers and students could dramatically transform the ability to deliver and analyze the results of formative assessment. The integration of technology in the classroom provides teachers with real-time feedback that can be used to inform instructional decisions. Teachers can create personalized learning experiences, get immediate feedback on student learning, and conduct data-driven instruction , which can result in an improvement in student outcomes and engagement. Nearpod provides real-time insights into student understanding through interactive lessons, interactive videos, gamification, and activities — all in a single platform.

The research and benefits of formative assessment in Nearpod

Teacher using data driven instruction on Nearpod to help students during class

The original platform design of Nearpod was inspired by a growing body of research around the positive impacts of consistent formative assessment and best practices for implementing them (Engle & Conant, 2002). In the beginning, teachers could facilitate Nearpod lessons from their devices that synchronized informational slides and a few options for formative assessments (open-ended questions, multiple choice quizzes, or polls) on student devices. As the educational landscape evolves, Nearpod has consistently enriched its suite of formative assessment tools with evidence-based solutions, supporting educators in adapting to the changing classroom environment.

Nearpod allows teachers to monitor real-time formative assessment data and share individual responses with the rest of the class, making students more eager to demonstrate their understanding. Also, teachers can access formative assessment data after any session in their post-session reports or on their teacher dashboard during instruction to monitor student progress. Now, Nearpod offers nine types of formative assessments to check for understanding in any lesson!

New to Nearpod? Teachers can sign up for free below to access these resources, interactive activities, and engaging lessons. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

1. Provide diverse assessment options to keep students interested

No matter how beneficial a formative assessment may be, doing the same thing over and over can get repetitive and have a negative impact on classroom engagement. Truly effective formative assessments should deploy a variety of tasks to measure student understanding (Ames, 1992). Diverse delivery of assessment is associated with strong cognitive and emotional gains in students (McLaughlin & Yan, 2017). This research inspired the Nearpod team to build out a more comprehensive suite of interactive assessments that could be added to a Nearpod lesson. Nearpod added Fill-in-the-blanks and Matching Pairs to better scaffold student work and responses for identifying and define-level assessments.

2. Provide opportunities for collaboration and creation

The introduction of the Collaborate Board allowed students to see and interact with peer-written responses, recreating the concept of a digital instructional “parking lot” and updating responses in real time on teacher dashboards. One study from 2010 showed that opportunities to “doodle” during a learning experience increased the likelihood of information retention (Andrade, 2010). The Draw It tool was created as a way to empower students who prefer expressing their understanding creatively. Students can submit drawings on a blank canvas or a background image uploaded by the teacher. The feature quickly became a teacher and student favorite!

3. Use reference media to support and scaffold student learning

For each interactive assessment, we try our best to remove any potential impediments from answering a question. One study found greater access to requisite background knowledge enhances online assessment outcomes (Fuchs et al., 2000). Accordingly, Nearpod developed the ability for teachers to add reference media, such as an image, a video, a website, or even an audio recording of a teacher’s voice, as an attachment to interactive assessments to give more background information.

Reference media example to use the benefits of formative assessments

4. Promote inclusivity and reduce biases during instruction

Not every student is willing to raise their hand publicly, and this popular method of questioning means many are left behind during formative assessments. Student-response systems increase participation and draw out reluctant participants. (Graham et al., 2007) Nearpod developed the optional feature to make student responses anonymous in order to promote increased participation and reduce feelings of vulnerability (Caldwell, 2007). In Nearpod lessons, the barriers to entry for participating are reduced compared to raising your hand in class.

One study found that teachers can maximize learning outcomes and promote inclusivity by allowing students to submit audio recordings in lieu of written responses (Dalton, Herbert, & Daysher, 2003). Nearpod has a feature whereby students can submit audio responses to an open-ended question. Cheryl Staats argues that every educator enters the classroom with some degree of implicit bias, manifesting itself in who gets called on, who is believed in, and general classroom attitudes (2016). It can be a hard thing to spot in oneself, let alone curb entirely, but technology can play a pivotal role in democratizing classroom participation and formative assessment strategies.

5. Incorporate educational games

Educational games create engaging, fun, and valuable learning experiences for students. These types of formative assessment tech tools help build 21st-century social skills and problem-solving skills and build community, all while learning and boosting student achievement. Games are most effective when well-planned and integrated into learning objectives. With Time to Climb, you can include an existing Nearpod lesson or use it as a quick stand-alone activity. Students compete to get to the top of a mountain by answering a series of questions correctly and quickly to become one of the top three winners of the game. Teachers can choose a setting, and students select a character. It’s a teacher and student favorite!

Start using Nearpod’s formative assessments

Formative assessment, especially with tools like Nearpod, has transformed traditional teaching methods. Teachers have attested to the fact that more students participate and participate consistently in Nearpod lessons compared to traditional lessons. Nearpod’s evolution showcases its commitment to supporting teachers with effective tools. Embracing technology-driven formative assessment not only enriches learning but also fosters an inclusive and adaptable educational environment where each student can thrive.

Foster a love of learning in every student with Nearpod. Teachers can sign up for free below to access and create interactive lessons. Administrators can schedule a call with an expert to unlock the full power of Nearpod for schools and districts.

Works Cited in Research Base

Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (1998). Assessment and classroom learning. Assessment in Education: principles, policy & practice, 5(1), 7-74.

Engle, R. A., & Conant, F. R. (2002). Guiding principles for fostering productive disciplinary engagement: Explaining an emergent argument in a community of learners classroom. Cognition and instruction, 20(4), 399-483.

Ames, C. (1992). Classrooms: Goals, structures, and student motivation. Journal of educational psychology, 84(3), 261.

McLaughlin, T., & Yan, Z. (2017). Diverse delivery methods and strong psychological benefits: A review of online formative assessment. Journal of Computer Assisted Learning, 33(6), 562-574.

Andrade, J. (2010). What does doodling do?. Applied Cognitive Psychology: The Official Journal of the Society for Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, 24(1), 100-106.

Fuchs, L. S., Fuchs, D., Karns, K., Hamlett, C. L., Dutka, S., & Katzaroff, M. (2000). The importance of providing background information on the structure and scoring of performance assessments. Applied Measurement in Education, 13(1), 1-34.

Graham, C. R., Tripp, T. R., Seawright, L., & Joeckel, G. (2007). Empowering or compelling reluctant participators using audience response systems. Active Learning in Higher Education, 8(3), 233-258.

Caldwell, J. E. (2007). Clickers in the large classroom: Current research and best-practice tips. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 6(1), 9-20.

Dalton, B. D., Herbert, M., & Deysher, S. (2003, December). Scaffolding students’ response to digital literature with embedded strategy supports: The role of audio-recording vs. writing student response options. Paper presented at the 53rd Annual Meeting of the National Reading Conference, Scottsdale, AZ.

Adam is a Learning Experience Designer at Nearpod. He previously taught High School History teacher in Houston, Texas where he also served as the Social Studies Department Chair. Adam is currently in charge of the quality control of Nearpod’s learning experiences. He is also the manager of the Digital Citizenship and Literacy program.

Adam Franklin

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13 Formative Assessments That Inspire Creativity

Sometimes mixing in formative assessments that go a step beyond exit slips and low-stakes quizzes can inject some fun—and creativity—into learning.

It’s always better to know if a student is struggling before a big test is in the rearview mirror. But students often lack the self-awareness to monitor their own learning, and may struggle to work up the courage to ask for help . Others may overestimate their mastery of important ideas and concepts, tricking their brains into thinking they’re prepared for a test when they’re not.

So when it comes to student learning, how can you tell what's sticking—and where additional instruction or review could make a difference?

Formative assessments are typically short, gradeless ways to evaluate what students know while they’re still in the process of learning it. When used early and often, they can shine a light on individual student progress, serve as general indicators of how the class is doing as a whole, and inform subsequent instruction. This process of actively checking in with students on their journey toward mastery is “especially effective when students are given tactical feedback, immediately followed by time to practice the skill,” says Todd Finley , a tenured professor of English education at East Carolina University.

Quick checks for understanding aren’t new, of course, but when time allows, occasionally injecting an element of creativity into formative assessments can deliver unexpected benefits. For example—regardless of a student's artistic talent—research suggests that drawing the information they’re learning can increase student recall by nearly double . And when kids are encouraged to tap into their imagination to show what they know, they tend to ask more innovative questions of themselves, brainstorm fresh solutions to problems, and synthesize material in original and surprising ways.

Here are 13 formative assessment strategies that lean into creativity—inspired by the work of several Edutopia contributors, and from Finley’s handy list of quick checks for understanding .

Simple Symbols: Sketchnoting—simple, hand-drawn renderings of things like facts, dates, or abstract concepts—can be a great way to help students process vocabulary. Educator Wendi Pillars has her students co-create a symbolic language library , working together to visually represent important terms from a unit. After choosing 10 terms, students develop an icon or character to correspond with each one. For example, a drawing of a sun can represent energy or a tree can represent life.

Write a Letter: On a sheet of paper or an index card, ask students to explain a new concept they've learned in the form of a short letter to a friend or family member, pretending the other person is new to the information. This process of explanation can open students' eyes to what they know and what they don't, explains Woo-Kyoung Ahn , a psychology professor at Yale University who uses a similar strategy with college students before exams.

Tweet Like a Historian: Challenge students to enter the minds of popular historical figures, tweeting about major events in the figure’s life as that person would have, suggests former educator Matthew Lynch . To get a firm grasp on how well students understand their chosen figure, ask who their figure might be following on social media, as well as topics that would be “trending” on their feed at the time. Educator Jill Fletcher prefers to use a paper template so that students can engage in the exercise without going online.

Playful Pamphlets: An effective brochure is easy and engaging to read, and offers eye-catching design. Ask students to create their own brochures that describe the key features of a concept, or to explain a historical event or scientific discovery. This can be done using paper and art materials, or digitally using applications like Canva or Google Slides.

Do It Yourself TED Talks: Most students are familiar with TED Talks , this strategy provides them with the opportunity to give their own. Educator Katy Farber describes them as "one person’s short presentation of an idea worth spreading." After showing an example that students can model, ask them to find an idea worthy of spreading from the day's lesson and create their own speeches to present the information. Those who feel comfortable can share with the class.

Comic Creators: Using digital creation tools like Canva , kids can create their own comic strips to connect new material and information from past units. The comics shouldn’t be a "regurgitation of knowledge," explains Andrew Miller , director of teaching and learning at the Singapore American School. Instead, they should have an authentic purpose, making it a fulfilling exercise where students create products that are informative and useful to peers. After a lesson on nutrition, for example, students could make comics that explain the major nutrients—as well as the role they play in how bodies function—that could be displayed in hallways for classmates to learn from.

Build-a-Billboard: Have small groups work together to create an advertisement, with visuals and text, to highlight a newly learned concept like Manifest Destiny or the scientific method. Students in San Francisco Unified School District health classrooms learn about tools advertisers use to convince people to buy their products, then create their own billboards. "If you were going to make an ad for your favorite fruit or vegetable, what techniques would you use?” asks health ed content specialist Christopher Pepper .

Sing It Out: Asking students to sing or rap about a lesson can be a fun change of pace—and rack up a few giggles. First, students identify the main concept of a lesson and list related keywords. In a rap about the order of operations, for example, educator Alex Kajitani lists “operations, order, parenthesis, exponent, multiply, divide, add, and subtract.” Using the website RhymeZone.com helps identify what words rhyme with each key term, then students can begin writing their rap, song, or even spoken word poem.

Illustrate Connections: “A student who draws as they learn considers the following: How should I represent the relationship between these parts? How large/small should I draw these parts? What shape should they be? Where do I place each part?,” explains instructional leader Shveta Miller . Invite students to draw a picture that illustrates a relationship between terms from the lesson or recreates a scene from their reading. Providing reflection questions like "How well did I recall the material after having represented it in my drawings?" or “When would drawing as I learn be useful? When is it not useful?” can be a useful add-on to the exercise.

60 Minutes: Students pair up and pretend they're a guest expert on the television program 60 Minutes or their local news broadcast. During their segment, they'll need to answer a few of their partner's interview-style questions—"What is the purpose of feudalism in a society?," for example.

Laughable Lists: At the end of a lesson or once students have finished assigned reading, ask them to enumerate what they think are the top ten most important takeaways. The twist? Students will have to try to infuse humor into their list of observations. Sharing a few examples before they begin can help students who might struggle with the exercise at first.

Cut and Paste: Encourage students—on their own, in pairs, or in groups—to make either digital or paper collages to demonstrate their understanding of the lesson's major themes and concepts: anything from matter and energy, to fractions and decimals. If time allows, have a few kids present their collages to the rest of the class and explain their thinking. 3-2-1 Action!: Choose a selection of excerpts from a recently read text—like a poem, play, or a short story—for students to dramatically interpret and perform. Without the use of props, costuming, or sets, students must not only have read the text but understood it enough to convey an insightful character analysis, as well as the mood and tone of the scene. These 5-minute performances can be recorded and submitted to the teacher to review, or shared in class for peers to see.

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Five key-strategies for formative assessment (Wiliam 2018).
Formative Assessment Rubric Examples
75 Formative Assessment Examples (2023)
A model formative assessment strategy
Revisiting Dylan Wiliam’s Five Brilliant Formative Assessment
Formative Assessment Strategies for Mathematical Thinking: A

COMMENTS

7 Smart, Fast Formative Assessment Strategies
4. Interview assessments: If you want to dig a little deeper into students' understanding of content, try discussion-based assessment methods. Casual chats with students in the classroom can help them feel at ease even as you get a sense of what they know, and you may find that five-minute interview assessments work really well. Five minutes ...
PDF 4 Formative Assessment Practices that Make a Difference in Classrooms
4 Formative Assessment Practices that Make a Dif erence in Classrooms. Spotlight on: formative assessment strategies and techniques. s do• Specific techniques to try• Implementation tools and tipsTo teachers, it's a familiar challenge: every class period, accomplish a significant amount while facil. tating learning for 25-plus students ...
Formative assessment: A systematic review of critical teacher
1. Introduction. Using assessment for a formative purpose is intended to guide students' learning processes and improve students' learning outcomes (Van der Kleij, Vermeulen, Schildkamp, & Eggen, 2015; Bennett, 2011; Black & Wiliam, 1998).Based on its promising potential for enhancing student learning (Black & Wiliam, 1998), formative assessment has become a "policy pillar of educational ...
PDF 60 Formative Assessment Strategies
35: Questioning - Questioning is a great formative assessment strategy to determine the depth of student understanding. Ask students lower level questions that focus on the facts and general information about a topic. Use higher level questions to encourage students to think about and reflect on their learning.
Formative Assessment Strategies: A teacher's guide
The main aim of questioning is the academic progress of students. Effective formative assessment practices involve asking learners to answer higher-order questions such as "how" and "why.". ‍. ‍. 3. Think-Pair-Share. It is one of the simplest formative assessment strategies.
Formative assessment and feedback for learning in higher education: A
The findings highlight a small number of promising strategies for formative assessment and feedback in HE. They also draw attention to a lack of (quality) evidence in this area overall. ... tested the effect of in-class student peer review in a quantitative research methods course. Based upon four sections of a course, 170 students completed ...
PDF The Effect of Formative Assessment Practices on Student Learning
computer-based formative assessment is more difficult to apply (Maier et al., 2016). Several meta-analysis research studies have been conducted to investigate the efficiency of formative assessment strategies. The results of these studies indicate that effect sizes vary with
A Summary of Evidence Based Formative Assessment Strategies
Dylan Wiliam and Paul Black originally defined formative assessment as: "encompassing all those activities undertaken by teachers, and/or their students, which provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged" (Black and Wiliam 1998). Formative assessment strategies are central to effective and responsive teaching and learning.
PDF How Teachers use Formative Assessment Strategies during Teaching
A precursor to using formative assessments in the classrooms is the significance of a change in teachers' beliefs about teaching and assessment (Marshall & Drummond, 2006; Smith et al., 2014; Brown, 2018). According to Philipp (2007, p. 259), beliefs are "lenses that affect one's view of some aspect of the world".
Formative Assessment
The vast amount of research to determine effective evidence-based strategies has demonstrated strong associations between formative assessment and improved student achievement (Hattie 2009).Assessing the current state of students' knowledge and skills to facilitate future learning can be conducted in a short cycle, which occurs between lessons, or longer cycles occurring between ...
Formative Assessment and Feedback Strategies
Formative assessment and formative feedback strategies are considered core components for promoting effective learning and instruction in all educational contexts (cf. Hattie, 2009).Within frameworks of formative assessment and feedback strategies, the learner is considered to be an active constructor of knowledge, and thus the formative function of feedback is emphasized.
Enhancing Learning Through Formative Assessment: Evidence-Based
Formative assessment is also referred to as assessment for learning, as a description of the function that the assessment data (in this case, reflective entries) perform. Assessment for learning is "a type of formative assessment that creates and uses feedback to improve students' learning and performance" (Coombe, 2018, p. 10). At the ...
The Research Base for Formative Assessment
More recently, Formative Assessment: A Meta-Analysis and a Call for Research, (Kingston & Nash, 2011) estimated the effect size in the 0.20 to 0.30 range. Regardless, the findings point to a significant level of impact. A critical review. There is some criticism of research that lumps all formative assessment together because formative ...
27 easy formative assessment strategies for gathering evidence of
A few years ago, I came across "10 assessments you can perform in 90 seconds" by TeachThought and really enjoyed the formative assessment strategies they outlined. Using formative assessment strategies in class during instruction—or "simple assessments," as they call them—is easy and provides the instant feedback teachers need to identify which learners need more help and adjust ...
Revisiting Dylan Wiliam's Five Brilliant Formative Assessment Strategies
The five strategies each get a chapter in his excellent book Embedding Formative Assessment (2011) which builds on the work he developed with other colleagues in the 90s and 00s. The five strategies were expressed as early as 2005: Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning intentions. Engineering effective classroom discussions, tasks and ...
Using scaffolding strategies to improve formative assessment practice
Introduction. Formative assessment has become a well-known and important concept in education and research (Black and Wiliam Citation 2018; Schildkamp et al. Citation 2020).Formative assessment is defined as a process of constant interaction between students and teacher (Black and Wiliam Citation 2012), and should be viewed as an integral part of teaching and learning (Leenknecht et al ...
5 Evidence-based formative assessment strategies using tech tools
5. Incorporate educational games. Educational games create engaging, fun, and valuable learning experiences for students. These types of formative assessment tech tools help build 21st-century social skills and problem-solving skills and build community, all while learning and boosting student achievement.
New Trends in Formative-Summative Evaluations for Adult Education
4. Assessment goal is formative or assessment for learning, that is, to improve the performance during the process but evaluation is summative since it is preformed after the program has been completed to judge the quality. 5. Assessment targets the process, whereas evaluation is aimed to the outcome. 6.
13 Formative Assessments That Inspire Creativity
Here are 13 formative assessment strategies that lean into creativity—inspired by the work of several Edutopia contributors, and from Finley's handy list of quick checks for understanding . Simple Symbols: Sketchnoting—simple, hand-drawn renderings of things like facts, dates, or abstract concepts—can be a great way to help students ...
PDF Research
a high-quality, research-based formative assessment plan in a state, district, or school . What Is Formative Assessment? For several years, there have been varying and often conflicting viewpoints and ... Formative Assessment Strategies Heritage (2007) categorizes formative assessment into three broad strategies, as follows:
Research Supporting the Ten Principles: Assessment Practices
"According to research, formative assessment practice has powerful effects on student learning and motivation (see Black & Wiliam, 1998b). Scholars in the area of educational assessment generally agree that when students are evaluated frequently for the purposes of monitoring learning and guiding instruction, they are more likely to be successful learners (Stiggins, 1998).
PDF The Effects of Formative Assessment on Academic Achievement
assessment activities and strategies in the classroom to gain comprehensive insight ... Hattie (2009) evaluated 800 meta-analysis studies on educational factors based on their impact size. This assessment included 52,637 studies and 146, 142 effect sizes ... According to the research results, formative assessment was the third most influential ...
PDF Best Practices for Differentiated Instruction
Teachers use formative assessments to diagnose each student's ability to learn course content and match instructional strategies to each student's level of readiness. The MTSS process requires universal screening tools and progress-monitoring assessments. Teachers can combine assessment data with their knowledge of students' interests ...
PDF 60 Formative Assessment Strategies
Formative assessment strategies can be given to students individually, as partners, in small groups, or as a class. The type of grouping used for the formative assessment will also influence the choice of strategy. Teachers should not rely on one type of assessment strategy. A variety of individual and group formative assessment strategies should