5 Key Strategies for Formative Assessment / Examples of This Strategy in Action
Clarifying, sharing & understanding learning intentions & criteria for success
  • Analyzing examples of varying quality
  • Establishing assessment criteria with students

Engineering effective classroom discussions, activities, and learning tasks to elicit evidence of learning
  • Process of finding out what students have actually learned (or already know) - not what has been assumed they’ve learned
  • Designing teacher’s next steps accordingly.

Provide feedback that moves learning forward
• Causes thinking
• Clear, focused and specific feedback
• Clearly related to the learning goals - helps close the gap
• More work for the recipient than the donor - requires action
Activating learners as instructional resources for one another
• Peer feedback using collaboratively developed criteria
• Internalize learning intentions & success criteria
Activating learners as owners of their own learning
• Self-assessment
• Self-regulated learning

(Wiliam, 2011)

Compare the Comments

Teacher #1 / Teacher #2
Good work but your supporting details are general.
Review your notes and the chapter on capitalism. / Highlight your arguments and use the same colour to highlight the specific examples you have provided to support your argument. Find one additional example to further strengthen your argument.
Find 2 specific examples to support your claim that capitalism is damaging to the environment.
Could you provide a stronger example of…

Discussion Questions:

What is required of students in each of these two situations?

Which comments provide the greatest opportunity for learning? Why?

Case Study Analysis

What examples of the 5 key formative assessment strategies do you see in this video? Briefly describe them.
Discussion Questions:
  • How did the assessment practices help students deepen their understanding of science?
  • How did the assessment inform teaching?

Individual Reflection

What was the learning intention you drafted last day?
How did you support your students in understanding the learning intention?
Describe where one of your students is at in terms of meeting the learning intention. What would be the evidence you could point to in support of your observation?
Applied Learning
  1. Selected Reading posted on galileo.org/pl
  • Five “Key Strategies” for Effective Formative Assessment, NCTM
  • Classroom Assessment: Minute by Minute, Day by Day, Wiliam et al.
  1. Bring back an example of a formative assessment strategy you tried and the impact evidence (change that resulted in student work) from each of the 3 students whose learning you will be tracking throughout the series.
  1. Explore CBE Assessment and Reporting resources.

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