TEXT GRAFFITI SELECTIONS
WIDA Focus on Formative Assessment
Assessment is an integral part of instruction and an important source of reflection for student and their educators. It can be the compass to guide students toward learning and academic achievement.
For English learners, accessing academic achievement means not only having declarative and procedural knowledge, but also the social, instructional, and academic language associated with it.
Instruction and assessment for English learners should be crafted with two goals in mind. The acquisition of knowledge and skills as well as the development of academic language.
“To many of today’s teachers, assessment is synonymous with high-stakes standardized tests. But, there is an entirely different kind of assessment that can actually transform teaching and learning” –Margaret Heritage (2007).
Within the context of a balanced assessment system, we can explore language assessment and what formative assessment looks like in the classroom when it focuses on academic language development.
Formative assessments should be in line with other assessments in the school and district. They should be a part of a balanced assessment system so that different data can provide a more accurate picture of students’ language development.
Formative assessments should be connected to the same language standards and learning targets as summative assessments for language and other assessments in the school/district.
Formative assessment should be embedded in instruction. And, instruction should be dynamic. Therefore, formative assessments should also be dynamic, student-centered, and standards-based. Formative assessments should evolve as students’ language evolves.
Formative assessments should provide feedback to guide instruction. Feedback for academic language development should be reflective for both students and teachers to guide instructional pathways.
Formative assessments should fit in to the reality of the classroom. They should not feel “hard” to fit in. There should be a seamless transition between instruction and formative assessment. If its feedback truly shapes instruction, formative assessments don’t need to be forced to administer but instead, a natural check for understanding that will be useful to plan future lessons.
Differentiating language on assessments is important because it allows students to show what they know. An on-going assessment system for language progression helps alleviate a “guessing game” for students and teachers to know where support is needed in the process.
Some content assessments can center around declarative (facts) and procedural (skills) knowledge from the content area. Language assessments concentrate on the discourse used to make meaning of the declarative and procedural knowledge.
Knowing words is not enough for English learners to navigate academic language and have access to academic successes. Students need to be able to combine these key vocabularies with other instructional language, following conventions of the specific academic and sociocultural context to ensure comprehensibility and language control.
Formative assessment is a process. The process is used by students and teachers during instruction to provide authentic feedback. This feedback is for both the students and the teacher in order to adjust ongoing teaching and learning to increase student outcomes.
Some formative assessments are spontaneous. At any given point in a lesson, a teacher and/or students may notice areas of challenge. Other formative assessments are planned to purposefully focus on learning targets.
A journal entry assignment for a student to self-assess her performance in math is an example of a planned formative assessment. Homework exercises, observation protocols, in-class assignments and activities, as well as in-class/out-of-class projects all fall into the category of formative assessments.
The formative assessment cycle includes goals, instruction, measuring, and feedback (with reflection).
Formative assessments for academic language development are focused on lessons’ language objectives as measurable goals for progression. For example, in a science lesson on evaporation, with a language objective to focus on the use of present tense verbs and the use of the words “evaporate” and “condensation” an appropriate formative assessment would measure these aspects of the lesson in order to provide feedback on them.
For “instructional tasks” to be a part of the formative assessment process, there must be an assessment tool that helps keep a record of students’ and teachers’ feedback on language development. Some examples are checklists, rubrics, interviews, surveys, observations, and anecdotal notes. They can be used by the teacher and/or the student to assess and self-assess language performance during an instructional task.
Assessment is about more than just “tests.” There are some dangers with too much “testing.” Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish between a balanced assessment system and tests. A balanced assessment system, while encompassing tests, goes beyond to include a variety of assessment tools.