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One of my personal goals this year is to get a handle on assessment~and I'm not just talking about grading papers in a timely manner (although I need to get a grip on that also). I'm talking about using daily meaningful assessment as part of my lesson plan. In fact, I'm now creating two basic plans for each week~one is a lesson plan, an outline of what lessons will be taught on each day of the week; the other is an assessment plan.
The assessment plan is a chart that states exactly what I want the students to do to show me that they have learned the lesson (ex. I can identify conflict in a teleplay), how they are going to show me (TLW fill in a chart with examples of least three conflicts in the teleplay), and what I'm going to do if the student(s) cannot do this by the end of the lesson (reteach lesson using a different strategy or calling students in for remediation).
Formative assessment should be immediate~I should be able to pinpoint during a class period or immediately following a class period whether the students got it or not. Summative assessment is after the fact~that horse is dead; stop beating it.
Using this idea, summative assessment is that unit test or end of the quarter test. Summative assessment data lets you know if the students learned what you expected them to learn.
Formative assessment data lets me know immediately who got it and who didn't in time for me to do something about it. Summative assessment data is almost too late; we've moved on.
I want to be able to formatively assess my students~I want to know if they're learning the material; I want to help those students who aren't learning it~even if it's just one student who's not getting it. I want to have the opportunity and the means to remediate any student or students who don't understand.
This is a struggle that many teachers at my school (and at other schools also) face. We need the time to do something with those students who need help.
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