Black & William describe Formative Assessment as “all those activities undertaken by teachers, and by their students in assessing themselves, which provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged. Such assessment becomes “formative assessment” when the evidence is actually used to adapt the teaching work to meet learning needs.”

This short video shows the importance of formative assessments in a classroom and how they help teachers change and focus their curriculum to better suit their

students.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rL54bfmZPzY

Formative Assessments help the students understand where they are headed, where they are right

now, and how they close the gap in the area that they do not

understand.

Formative Assessments allow teachers to facilitate student learning and helps the student to close the gap when there is

misunderstanding about a topic because the students are given the feedback to help move their learning forward.

JOURNALS

My students have 3 journals in their desks; one for math, one for reading and one for

S.S. and Science. We use these journals daily. I have the students write, draw,

explain, and even question content in these journals.

This was one of their journal assignments. We read a story together and I

modeled “thinking out loud”. We then read

another story, we did this process together. On day 3 this was their independent

practice. The storieschallenged them to ‘think

outside of the box.’

This was a child’s verison of a poem. I asked themto draw a small sketch that went along with each stanza after we had discussed the poem as a class.This was an easy way for me to check their understanding of the

poem.

The students were asked to relate

their background knowledgeto what they read in the poem.I also encourage my studentsto question what their readingand ask them to write out their

thoughts.

These are both examples of quick formative assessments.

We studied both the solar systemand the parts of a plant. These

simple drawings helped me evaluateeach child’s understanding very

quickly. They were not graded. I leave small notes and comments to help the

students understand how they can correct the issues and grow in their

understanding.

This was a KWL chart that I had my students complete after an

intense study of the voting process and the two candidates. We also followed this study by having the students participate in a mock election that included the students having to register,

the ballets, booths, and the I VOTED stickers.

RUBRICS

MCLASS RUBRICSSummary Writing Rubrics

Journal Writing Rubrics

EXIT SLIPS