Explore the resources below and as a stage, select a formative assessment strategy to trial this week or next.
After trialing the strategy, please record responses to the below questions in this document prior to TPL Week 9:
Discussion questions for TPL Week 9;
How did you use the formative assessment strategy?
What impact did the formative assessment strategy have? What did it tell you about your students understanding and skills?
What are potential barriers to embedding the strategy in everyday practice?
If you were to use the strategy again, what would you change?
After trialing the strategy, please record responses to the below questions in this document prior to TPL Week 9:
Discussion questions for TPL Week 9;
How did you use the formative assessment strategy?
What impact did the formative assessment strategy have? What did it tell you about your students understanding and skills?
What are potential barriers to embedding the strategy in everyday practice?
If you were to use the strategy again, what would you change?
Explore the following resources individually and then select a strategy to trial as a stage:
Introducing Student Peer Assessment (Success Criteria) - DoE
Strategies for Student Peer Assessment - DoE
8 Quick Checks for Understanding - Edutopia
Exit Slips - Checking for Understanding - Edutopia
Introducing Student Peer Assessment (Success Criteria) - DoE
Strategies for Student Peer Assessment - DoE
8 Quick Checks for Understanding - Edutopia
Exit Slips - Checking for Understanding - Edutopia
Using mini-whiteboards for formative assessment
Whiteboards are a whole-class, visual method of checking for understanding. On the teacher’s cue, each student draws or writes a response to a question or prompt on an individual whiteboard. Unlike other checking for understanding (CFU) methods, in which teachers make an inference about student learning from a sample of students, with whiteboards, the teacher visually records answers from the entire class. Generally, checking for understanding using whiteboards is most effective when the responses are short so that the teacher can scan the responses from all students relatively quickly (e.g., the answer to a computation problem, a single word or short phrase, an arrow pointing to a specific part of a sketch).
Three universal characteristics as they relate to whiteboards
1. Teachers use whiteboards to check for understanding of important content.
*Teachers make appropriate instructional adjustments in light of the formative data gathered via the whiteboards exercise. - For example, the teacher’s next instructional move will be based on the information gathered, for example whether the majority of the class are finding the task to be too simple or if two students demonstrate that they mastered the concept.
(Adapted from the Graduate School of Education, 2014)
Three universal characteristics as they relate to whiteboards
1. Teachers use whiteboards to check for understanding of important content.
- For example, teachers check for understanding at key moments in the lesson that are revelatory of students’ progress toward mastering the lesson objective.
- A: Teachers ensure that the use of Whiteboards produces clear, visually scannable responses. For example: “Divide your whiteboard in half and record two ways that you could solve this addition problem.'
- B: Teachers use strategies to maximize the likelihood that each student’s response is her own. - For example, the teacher creates a culture in which students are sharing their own answers, not copying the answer from a neighbor’s board. Or, teachers can give a crisp in-cue that signals to students when they should raise their whiteboards. “On your boards, write the word in this sentence that conveys the author’s sense of wonder. Show me your boards when I say ‘three’ . . . one, two, three.”
- C: Teachers use follow-up questions to probe the students’ whiteboarded responses. - For example, teachers ask strategic questions of intentionally selected students to better understand why students answered they way that they did. “Most of the class drew graphs with slopes of zero between times C and D. There were a few of you who drew positive slopes in that same interval. Let me hear from someone who drew a positive slope. Why did you think the slope should be positive? . . . . . . Jamal?”
*Teachers make appropriate instructional adjustments in light of the formative data gathered via the whiteboards exercise. - For example, the teacher’s next instructional move will be based on the information gathered, for example whether the majority of the class are finding the task to be too simple or if two students demonstrate that they mastered the concept.
(Adapted from the Graduate School of Education, 2014)
