Formative assessment

                                       

A story to share:

Last semester, during my block I taught year 8, microbes. After 2 weeks, I asked the students (as advised by my teacher) to prepare pamphlets on any type of microbes in groups. Each group was assigned a microbe by me and they were supplied the necessary stationary. Students were allowed to use book and at the end every group would be presenting their pamphlets.

When students started to prepare, it was a revealing journey for them as well as for me. When I was supervising the groups, I could explore there deficiencies, lack of understandings and even some misconceptions. Moreover, I realized some aspects of teaching had to be changed. I should have allowed more time for student participation, frequent question asking. It was optimistic for me that I was not a complete failure, but I needed many improvements. Moreover, apart from content I also found out about the student’s literacy level. Many of them were really good, some of them lagging far behind the rest of the class and some of them were at an average level.

Next week, I took some revision classes which were mainly student oriented and less teacher talk. We discussed bacteria, virus, fungi, protozoa, good and harmful microbes. This time the students were at much clearer position about their concept. Many of them came up with interesting questions.

This experience with year 8 gave me the idea about necessity of formative assessment in the classroom. Continuous teaching without any investigation to find its success will not take the class anywhere. Formative assessment is assessment for learning, which does not need any grading like a summative assessment. Well it creates the opportunity for student practice as well as acts as a guide for teacher for future teaching strategies. So both the teacher and the students know where they stand and what aspects have to be improved (Dodge, 2009). One crucial thing that underlies this type of assessment is student participation. Without students’ participation it will not acquire its full effectiveness. Furthermore the teacher has to identify learning goals, establish success criteria and devise the assessment tasks to discover extent of learning (Garrison and Ehringhaus, 2007).

There is no single but many strategies to be implemented in classroom for formative assessment, where they are aligned with the learning and course objectives. As a teacher we must bear in mind that these types of tasks are ultimately preparing the students for their summative assessments by deepening their understanding of the topic taught. Students are challenged on their ideas. At the time designing the tasks Bloom’s taxonomy can help to come up with questions, tasks and guide us to nurture specific skills in question in relation to the course. And the skills are already mapped by the teacher in the mapping grid before starting the course.

Several strategies can be used as formative assessments. Let us take the module 8.5 Evolution of Australian Biota in stage 6 biology syllabus as an example. For dot point 8.5.1, the traffic light technique can be applied, where students will demonstrate their level of understanding as the teacher goes through basics like Gondwana,  matching continents and more. For 8.5.2 (evolutionary relationship between extinct species… mega fauna, extant species), think, pair and share can be used by giving students some research materials. Later students can describe their understandings to the whole and come up with their queries as well.

With the dot point 8.5.3.4 (pollination, seed dispersal…) students can be divided in groups and each group will prepare their own concept map. Afterwards, one member from each group will explain the other groups about their topic. And simple lightning writing activity can also be used here. Of course all these activities must be supervised by the teacher where teacher goes to every group and listens to the discussions and facilitates the students, if needed.  

Lastly I think it is important that the teacher does an assessment of students’ prior knowledge at the beginning of the module by doing a brainstorming, simple e quiz (where teacher then discusses the wrong answers), concept mapping on theory of evolution, cell division and movement of crustal plates. As we proceed, we should also take into account the level of improvement or decline in regards to the content and provide feedback on that to the students.

It is evident that undertaking formative assessment is quite time consuming and requires a lot of effort from the teacher. With a big syllabus like biology which is compacted with lots of contents we need to be tactical about the assessments. We must provide descriptive feedback to the students which allows them to really see where they in terms of the concept instead of just saying ‘good’, ‘well done’ or ‘needs improvement’.

References:

Dodge, J. (2009). 25 Quick Formative Assessments for a Differentiated Classroom: 

     Easy, Low-Prep Assessments That Help You Pinpoint Students' Needs and Reach All 

     Learners. New York: Scholastic Inc.

Garrison, C. & Ehringhaus, M. (2007). Formative and summative assessments in the 

     classroom.  Retrieved from http://www.amle.org/Publications/WebExclusive

     /Assessment/tabid/1120/Default.aspx