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My key take away from the resources includes the following: Post lesson reflection opportunities allow students to assess their own learning and identify potential misconceptions.

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The biggest takeaway from today's learning is that formative assessments should be used to adapt instruction and provide feedback. Formative assessments should teach students how to identify where they are at and where they need to go.

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My key takeaway’s from the resources I was able to view is the importance of feedback for students, and the impact that feedback leaves. A small note might be just what they need to get over the hill of knowing vs. understanding.

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When students understand what is expected/required from them, the teacher is more likely to get the students "true knowledge" instead of potentially getting students just not understanding the requirements.

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Formative assessments are not grade-based, nor are they intended to evaluate students in finality. They are intended to have students show their knowledge so that it can be reformed or augmented in some way(s).

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My key take away after reviewing these resources was that I am spending too much time on formative assessments or that sometimes I assign them and do not have the time to review them before the next lesson. There were so many tips on here about how I can be more effective and efficient.

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In summary, assessment and feedback can feel like a lot of work and behind-the-scenes load from teachers. However, formative assessment can also be placed in the hands of students and their peers and it can be built in an even more engaging way.

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The key I am taking away from this first lesson focused on Formative Assessment, is that the value cannot be overlooked. More important than just a grade, Formative Assessment should be presented in a variety of Formats, both engaging the student and providing clarity to the teacher for what feedback and adaptations need to take place.

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I learned about how formative assessments can also have students reflect on their own learning. I can adapt future classes based on students telling me what they learned, what they wonder, and how this information connects to other things they have learned.

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My key take away from the resources I watched was to not grade everything but to give meaningful feedback and use the students to help with that. Not everything has to fall on you as the teacher. Verbal feedback can be better in the time that is allowed.

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Google Forms to Use for Formative Assessment

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Google Forms to Use for Formative Assessment

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This resource provided several good points about what a formative assessment is and how we should use it to inform our instruction. The author quoted John Dewey, who said "We don't learn from experience.  We learn from reflecting on experience.". This quote resonated with me, because how often in our classrooms are we really taking that time to pause and reflect? I would like to spend more time allowing my students that "breather" to really think about their learning and give me a chance to reflect on my instructional practices. I hope to be able to use several of the pre-made forms in this article.

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During the Lesson Check for Understanding

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During the Lesson Check for Understanding

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I appreciate learning more about formative assessment to check student understanding of material before or after the material is taught. In the future I will take the article recommendation of polls and use it to assess what the group overall understands without singling out students since it does not require names on the Mentimeter website. I will also continue to use Google Forms for recommendations regarding formative assessments and utilize more of the Google Classroom applications. Overall this article had some good insight into FA.

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Build it Together: Co-Constructing Success Criteria with Students

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Build it Together: Co-Constructing Success Criteria with Students

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Build it Together: Co-Constructing Success Criteria with Students | Cult of Pedagogy

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When we include students in the process of defining quality work, they are more likely to rise to those standards.

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Empowering Students to Own the Assessment Process

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Google Forms to Use for Formative Assessment

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Google Forms to Use for Formative Assessment

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A formative assessment is a tool that we as educators can use to collect information from students. We can then analyze this information in order to evaluate student learning and understanding. One way that teachers often use formative assessments is to tailor their instruction. Based on the data collected from the assessment, teachers can make an informed decision on whether to offer an extension, conduct remediation, or move on to the next lesson.

While assessments are a very practical and powerful teaching tool, it can also be helpful to students by providing an opportunity for them to reflect on their learning. John Dewey once said:

"We don't learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on experience."

In other words, students can only learn by constructing their own knowledge via metacognition. And implementing formative assessments provides students with that opportunity.

In the Age of Accountability, it is typically expected and required of teachers to collect data on student growth and achievement. Teachers are frequently inundated with progress monitoring and aligning their instruction with state and national standards. I would argue that while data is important, we should not operate in a data-driven culture. Instead, we should operate in a data-informed culture where data informs our instruction, as opposed to driving it.

I love Google forms because it offers modification to paper assessments which can really help to transform teaching and learning. For example, it allows us to quickly collect responses in an organized fashion, provides a "Summary of results" tool that sorts and analyzes data into graphs and charts, and it allows us to share these forms and collaborate with others. It also has additional features and tools such as third party add-ons, the ability to insert images and videos, and provides automatic grading options.

Therefore, my Google Innovator Project for this year was to create a collection of various formative assessment templates with Google Forms. My goal for this project is to share these templates with other teachers so that they can adopt and modify these assessments to use with their students. To use these formative assessments, all teachers have to do is click on my Google Drive Folder link and simply "Make a copy" of any Google Form that they would like to use in their classroom.

Each formative assessment offers a different way for students to reflect on what they learned for each lesson, and allows for the teacher to collect and analyze their responses to inform and tailor their instruction. What's more, these formative assessments can be used with most grade levels in all subject areas.

Here is a list of the different formative assessment templates that I created with Google Forms.

Form-ative Assessments - Google Drive Folder link

These formative assessments are just one of the many different ways for teachers to evaluate student learning and understanding. If you are interested in these Google Forms, I hope that you choose to use and share them with other educators. However, please know that all of these resources are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial 4.0 United States license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Put simply, you are free to copy, distribute, and adapt these resources as long as you give proper attribution and do not charge for them.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

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15 Form-ative Assessments with Google Forms

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A formative assessment is a tool that we as educators can use to collect information from students. We can then analyze this information in order to evaluate student learning and understanding. One way that teachers often use formative assessments is to tailor their instruction.

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Peer assessment in pairs

The simplest form of peer assessment is to get students to work alone on an exercise for five minutes or so, and then get pairs to swap their work and assess each other's. Feedback is usually verbal rather than in writing. It needs to be given in a supportive way.

Task
"Find a formative teaching method such as peer assessment in pairs (directly below) and draw a diagram that summarises the bullet points that explain the strategy."
You can use the diagram below or teaching method selection menus to help you.

Peer assessment in pairs with model answers

This strategy is useful if you are setting less work for students than you would like because you can't keep up with marking. However peer assessment is good practice anyway.

Students do a worksheet of questions and put their name on it

They hand these to the teacher, who gives them out to other students to mark. Students do not know who is marking their work.

Students mark their peer's work using 'model answers' or 'worked solutions' including a mark scheme provided by the teacher.

The work is handed back to its rightful owner and students each keep the worked solutions. Most students will probably check the quality of the peer's marking, but the teacher does not.

In the case Gibbs reports, the teacher did not even take down the marks that the students' obtained. The average mark on the unit rose from around 45% to around 75% as a result of this strategy!

Select a teaching method:

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Formative Teaching Methods - The Teachers Toolbox

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Feedback is usually verbal rather than in writing and needs to be given in a supportive way. It can be provided by the teacher, the learner or by a peer.

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Tales From a Very Busy Teacher - A Teaching Blog

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Educational researcher, John Hattie, found that the tipping point of a .4 effect size was the point at which student performance surpasses the expectation of one year's growth in one year's time. He says that the vast majority of what we do in education works, but that we need to focus on the most effective strategies in order to increase student learning and capitalize on overall increases in student academic achievement. Those strategies are the ones that have a .4 effect size or higher. Using these highly effective strategies can help to accelerate student learning or close the learning deficits in a more quick and efficient manner.

Here are 10 of my favorite instructional strategies with a high effect size.

1. Formative Assessment .4

Formative assessment is an assessment for learning used to monitor each student's learning, but also advance each student's learning. Formative assessment informs the student of his or her progress in becoming proficient, and it also informs the teacher about the effectiveness of instruction and where to go next in the instructional process. Formative assessments can also be as simple as the daily checks for understanding during instruction through the use of whiteboards, exit tickets, or independent practice.

2. Direct Instruction .59

Explicit instruction, or direct instruction, is an effective teaching practice that clearly communicates learning intentions and success criteria to students. The term direct instruction may cause some teachers to think that the delivery of instruction will be rigid, boring, and mundane. This is not true! You can make direct intruction fit your teaching style, while also incorporating student collaboration, clear modeling, and a chance to differentiate for all students while teaching.

3. Effective Feedback .62

Giving students feedback on their learning is more than just saying " good job." Feedback requires explicit feedback that is connected to what the student is learning and doing. It is important to give students specific feedback so they can monitor their own learning. This helps them change direction, if they need to, during their learning journey.

4. Reciprocal Teaching .74

An instructional strategy that aims to produce better reading comprehension. The strategy contains four steps: summarizing, questioning, clarifying, and predicting. It is "reciprocal" because students and the teacher take turns leading a conversation about the text they're reading. They ask questions while practicing each of the four steps. I like to teach each step in a mini-lesson and then have students practice the roles independently in a group. You can find role cards in my shop.

5. Classroom Discussion .82

Classroom discussion involves much more than a teacher asking a class a question. It can be structured and involve students using academic language and specific language frames to have a discussion with their peers. You can use classroom discussion for a variety of texts and topics. Check out my structured language bookmarks and my discussion cards to support collaborative conversations in your classroom.

6. Teacher Clarity .84

Teacher clarity is defined as "a measure of the clarity of communication between teachers and students in both directions." It can be classified into four categories according to the Teacher Clarity Playbook:

Clarity of organization

Clarity of explanation

Clarity of examples and guided practice

Clarity of assessment and student learning

A major part of teacher clarity is understanding what students need to learn and identifying how they will know that they learned it. To do that you need to analyze standards, plan meaningful instruction and assessments, and be focused on impact while also clarifying expectations. Check out these 20 easy ways you can practice teacher clarity in your classroom.

7. Success Criteria .88

Success criteria provide students with an opportunity to assess their own learning. In my opinion, we can also look at success criteria as assessment as learning. This occurs when students use feedback from personally monitoring what they're learning to make adjustments, adaptations, and even major changes in what they understand. They are often brief, co-constructed with students, aim to remind students of those aspects on which they need to focus, and can relate to the surface and deep learning from the lesson.

8. Intervention 1.09

Intervention is a multi-tier approach to the early identification and support of students with learning and behavior needs. The process begins with high-quality instruction and universal screening of all children in the general education classroom, which is Tier 1. Struggling learners are provided with interventions and those not making progress are then provided with increasingly intensive instruction usually in small groups (Tier 2). If still no progress, then students receive individualized, intensive interventions that target the students' skill deficits (Tier 3). It's more than just putting students on a computer program and should be intentional and planned out and targeted.

9. Jigsaw 1.2

The Jigsaw instructional method is a cooperative approach to learning originally developed by Elliot Aronson. Following this method, a teacher introduces a main topic and several subtopics. Jigsaw students are broken into "home groups" and each member of the home group is assigned a subtopic. Then, students form expert groups to study their assigned subtopic through research and discussion. After the students have mastered the subtopic in question, they return to their home group to report on their findings. At the end of the exercise, each home group member has learned about each subtopic from a member of the relevant expert group or through their own investigation with an expert group.

10. Self Assessment 1.33

Self-assessment involves students in the assessment and learning process. They become more engaged in their own learning and are also empowered. You can have students use self-assessment before a lesson by asking them to rate their level of understanding after reading the learning goal. Students can also use target responses to self-assess their writing pieces. It's an easy and successful way to get your students involved.

For more information on effective teaching practices, check out The Very Busy Teacher Club for online workshops, free resources, and more.

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10 Instructional Strategies with High Effect Size

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Get the most out of your day teaching by using these 10 instructional strategies that will help you be more efficient and intentional with your teaching.

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If it's tailored to the individual student and clear-cut, feedback can be a formidable learning tool.

Feedback can be a powerful process that greatly impacts student learning when it affirms students' identities as learners, is clear and direct, and considers the individual attributes of each student.

Strength: You clearly state your claim, The women's rights movement began with the suffrage movement but it's not over yet, and provided a list of recent events, such as the Women's March of 2017 and the U.S. Women's Soccer Team's court case, to support your thinking.

Need: Include the counterclaim and how you would respond. What would someone say if they disagreed with you? Where would they find fault with your supporting evidence? What can you include to address these arguments?

Next step: Work with your writing partner to talk through the Claim, Support, Question protocol. Do some more research to address the questions that you and your partner generate, and add this information to your essay.

Here's an example. A student receives the following feedback from her teacher:

This feedback moves beyond what students often receive in response to their work-statements such as "Great job!" "Shows improvement." "Add evidence." The more comprehensive feedback can empower students because it's individualized to the student; leverages students' assets, interests, and learning preferences; and builds students' confidence in themselves. Let's unpack the above example to see how to accomplish this.

Providing Meaningful Feedback

Strengths: Identify what students can do in relation to the learning target, regardless of whether they've achieved mastery. The feedback in our example is based on the following learning target and success criteria for the student:

Stating a claim

Providing supporting reasons and relevant evidence

Addressing counterclaims

I can write an argument by doing the following:

When a teacher identifies what students can do, it communicates the belief that all students are learners and can achieve high expectations. Students know what to repeat in future assignments and, most important, develop confidence in themselves. Often by middle and high school, students who have repeatedly been told what they cannot do have accepted failure as a norm and need support in redeveloping their identity as a learner. Identifying what students can do helps rebuild this identity characteristic necessary for learning.

Needs: Identify where a student is in relationship to the learning target. The language the teacher uses in identifying needs can affect how students receive the feedback. In our feedback example, the teacher states the need- Include the counterclaim and how you would respond-and then provides some questions to prompt student thinking. Zaretta Hammond writes in Culturally Responsive Teaching and the Brain that direct and honest feedback helps students understand that feedback is affirmation that the student can reach the goal. When feedback is cushioned or vague, a student may interpret it to mean that the teacher doesn't believe in the student's capability.

Next steps: These directly correlate with the identified needs and provide suggestions on how students can move forward. Too often, students are given feedback but don't know how to address it. The teacher supports student independence and self-regulation by describing actions that the student can take on their own to strengthen their work. In our example of feedback, the teacher reminds the student to use a thinking routine that has been repeatedly used in class-to identify possible counterclaims and provide stronger evidence to support their reasoning.

Next steps should also consider the individual attributes of the student. For example, if the teacher knows a student is an artist, suggesting that the student use sketchnoting before writing might be a good next step. Students who use oral language to process information might benefit from peer discussion, as mentioned in the example, before writing. A linguistically diverse student might write in the language they are most comfortable with to organize and elaborate on their ideas.

The amount, timing, and format: These can influence how a student receives the feedback and their willingness to act on it. Some students need less feedback more often, while other students prefer to have the time to process and apply the feedback. Feedback can be verbal or written and offered privately or in small groups. The same process for providing feedback will not work for everyone. If a teacher is unsure as to what strategy might work best for the student, the teacher can conference with the student and discuss different strategies. This builds the trust that underlies the successful feedback relationship.

The feedback that students receive from their teachers serves as models for students to engage in peer feedback and self-assessment. When students use the same process with their peers and then apply it to themselves, they're truly empowered. Students, like their teachers, must have clearly articulated learning targets and a protocol, such as the strengths, needs, and next steps. They must also reflect on the feedback process. Questions such as "How did feedback from your classmate help you revise your work?" "What did you learn from examining your classmate's work that will help you in revising your own?" and "How did you revise your work after completing your self-assessment?" all help students see the value of the feedback process.

Empowering students through feedback begins with teacher feedback that identifies what the student can do, clearly states areas of needs, and considers the individual attributes of each student in providing next steps. When students receive quality feedback from their teachers, they are primed to engage in peer feedback and self-assessment, and empowered to be self-regulated, independent learners.

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If it's tailored to the individual student and clear-cut, feedback can be a formidable learning tool.

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Adding simple tech options to boost formative assessment activities can help ensure that every student is getting the most from the lesson.

Monkey Business Images / Shutterstock

When you think of assessment, what's the first thing that comes to mind? I started teaching before iPads came on the scene, and the introduction of technology had a profound effect on the way I think about formative assessment. Digital tools are more than a quick way to review quiz responses amid instruction, although that's indeed a plus. Digital tools can help more students reach you and also enable you to gather higher-quality information.

Below are some tips to help you check for understanding in the middle of a lesson. You'll notice how these strategies build upon traditional best practices. For example, while a turn-and-talk strategy doesn't need to include technology, the benefit or value that tech adds to this interaction is that students can share more widely and let you hear from every partnership.

Check for Comprehension During a Lesson

In the middle of a lesson, pausing to check for student understanding can be a strategic and purposeful part of your goal to make sure instruction is meeting students' needs. What might this look like in a tech-friendly classroom? Here are four options:

Turn-and-talk: Students chat with a classmate and then submit their responses to a shared space. This could include a discussion board like Schoology where students post their thoughts to a discussion thread. You might also try a collaborative board like Padlet that offers a few choices like adding a voice note, link, or several sentences to their post.

Stop-and-jot: With this strategy, students pause to capture their thinking in various ways-drawing a picture in a space like Seesaw or adding a virtual sticky note to a collaborative space such as Jamboard. During a stop-and-jot you can choose a space that gives students choice on how they'd like to capture their thinking. Options could include a text, sketch, or even audio recording.

Quick question: Students reply to an open-ended, short-response question, which can give you a sense of their current level of understanding. An interactive tool like Lumio, Nearpod, or Pear Deck lets teachers insert a question into a teacher-led or self-paced lesson to check for understanding with a quick response.

Pulse check: With a pulse check, students share their confidence level, how they're feeling, or an indication of what more they might need to succeed with the lesson. You can use options such as a word cloud, a scale, or ranking with a free tool like Mentimeter). To set up students for a pulse check, you can ask a question of the entire class, with students responding anonymously. This can give you a read of the room. Alternatively, you can ask students to share a response tagged to their name so that you can follow up with them one-on-one.

Making a Formative Assessment Plan

When planning mid-lesson moments to check for understanding, first determine the direction and intended outcomes of the lesson. Know where you're headed and what you'd like to see students accomplish by the end of the lesson or activity. Identifying success criteria is helpful during all phases of formative assessment, including in the middle of a lesson.

For example, if you poll the class and find that student confidence is low, or you ask students to post a response to a question in a collaborative space and their answers raise concerns, you might decide to pivot your instruction based on their responses. Mid-lesson checks offer an opportunity to bring the class together for a reset. The information you gather may lead you to take immediate action, such as asking a small group of students who have shown they need more support to review a concept or making you aware of what to look out for during the remainder of the lesson.

Putting Ideas Into Action

What's the best way to put these strategies into action? Choose one of the tactics listed above to plug into your weekly routine. You might decide to use a tool that students are already familiar with to start. This way, you can easily shift how you use it during other parts of the day to gather actionable formative assessment data in the midst of a lesson. For example, if you already use a tool like Mentimeter to create word clouds when kicking off a new unit of study, try the scale feature in the middle of an upcoming lesson for a pulse check.

As you review the ways you currently check for understanding, choose just one idea from the list. Try it out and see if it sticks. If it doesn't provide value or match your goals for formative assessment, switch it up, try another idea, and pick one to build into your routine.

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Using Popular Apps for Formative Assessment

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Adding simple tech options to boost formative assessment activities can help ensure that every student is getting the most from the lesson. Monkey Business Images / Shutterstock When you think of assessment, what's the first thing that comes to mind?

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6 Teacher-Approved Tips for Faster, More Effective Feedback

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Check for Understanding: What Are You Learning About Your Students During the Lesson? - Dr. Catlin Tucker

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Teachers often focus on what students will learn during a lesson. Rarely, do we stop and ask ourselves, “What will I learn about what my students know or can do during this lesson?” This is a critical question that teachers should ask themselves as they design the parts of their lesson. We need to build […]

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Build it Together: Co-Constructing Success Criteria with Students | Cult of Pedagogy

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When we include students in the process of defining quality work, they are more likely to rise to those standards.

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Post-Lesson Reflection: What Do Students Think They Learned? - Dr. Catlin Tucker

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In the last two blogs, I have focused on strategies teachers can use to 1) assess prior knowledge before a lesson and 2) check for understanding during a lesson. I've suggested that teachers build mechanisms into their lessons to collect formative assessment data. That way, they can use that data to design learning experiences that [...]

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Assessment

If you haven't been nailed by the "gotcha" game when you were a student, I'll bet you've seen it as a teacher.

Here's how it works.

Students studies diligently. Knows SO much about the topic of a quiz or a test.

Student takes quiz/test.

Quiz/test asks student for the one or two details that slipped through the cracks while studying.

Student knows SO much about the topic. But that's the one detail the student didn't know.

Gotcha.

It's almost like the test -- or the teacher -- saying, "See? I found the one thing you didn't know. GOTCHA."
Often, we don't say it that way out loud. We don't mean it that way. But that's the way many traditional assessments work. And it's wrong.
Assessments should show what students know, not catch what they don't know.
They should help students demonstrate their mastery, not catch them in the "gotcha" game.

So, how can we improve our assessments to show what students know, not what they don't know?

4 strategies to avoid "gotcha" on quizzes and tests

Thankfully, a few small adjustments to the way we do tests, quizzes and all sorts of assessments can move us away from the "gotcha" game.

These test and quiz strategies can be used on paper assessments as well as digital ones. Incorporate some of these ideas in quizzes and tests in Google Forms, Formative, and on other platforms.

Here are four strategies you can implement quickly to start getting results:

1. An "everything I know but wasn't asked" question

In a video presentation during the Ditch That Textbook Digital Summit, the topic of "brain dumps" came up. It's a retrieval strategy where students are asked (without being graded) to recall everything they can about a certain topic. Research has shown that brain dumps improve long-term memory.

This idea prompted educator Lexie Schuman to share a strategy she had learned from Twitter:

The idea is a simple one. Add an extra space at the end of a test asking for "everything I know about this topic but wasn't asked on the test." Students add details they remember, things they've learned, evidence of their mastery of the subject.
It's BRILLIANT. But it's tricky.
In that Twitter thread, the question came up: How do I grade this? Do I give credit for their answers? How does it factor into the grade?

By nature, the question seem like it should be optional for the student -- anything else the student knows.

The "everything I know" grading dilemma

Grading this could be messy. (But let's be honest. Determining a student's true mastery by asking a bunch of multiple choice questions has its pitfalls, too.) I'd LOVE to see your approach to this in the comments below.

Here's one approach: Grade the quiz/test. Then, look at the student's response to the "everything I know" question. Then, ask yourself, "In light of what I see here and the standards, how should I adjust the student's grade to reflect his/her mastery?"

This approach is not fast and efficient like a multiple-choice quiz or test. But it's certainly more human. And it empowers students to show what they know.

2. "Nailed it / not sure" boxes

When students go back over a quiz or test they've taken, it's hard for them to remember what they were thinking when they took it. (It's hard for adults -- anyone! -- to do this.)

Add a space on a test for students to identify how confident they are in their responses. Make sure they feel safe to respond honestly and know that it won't impact their grade.

A suggestion: check boxes for "nailed it" and "not sure." (From Powerful Teachingby Pooja Agarwal and Patrice Bain and their Ditch That Textbook Digital Summit presentation.)

For younger students: a smiley face and a sad face. (Or check and question. Or something similar.)

These boxes are helpful for several reasons:

They serve as self-produced feedback from students to themselves later.

They help students know what to study for future assessments.

They can inform follow-up instruction.

Again, this is non-graded optional feedback students can mark for themselves to see later.

3. An "explain your answers" question

This is a different version of the "everything I know" question. The "everything I know" question is more open-ended. The "explain your answers" question is more focused on just the questions asked on the test or quiz.

This space helps to eliminate the frustration of a misunderstood or poorly-worded question. When the student interprets a question differently than it was intended, that communication breakdown is a barrier to understanding what the student knows.

An optional "explain your answers" question breaks down that barrier.

Benefits: It's more focused than the "everything I know" question. It's more precise and concrete on grading.

Drawbacks: It still pigeonholes students into answering specific questions and can lead to the "gotcha" game.

The "explain your answers" question and the "everything I know" question are two different tools in your text/quiz tool belt. Choose them and use them as you wish.

4. Student-created quiz and test questions

When we (the teachers) create quizzes and tests, students see them as something imposed on them by us. They don't understand the process. It's easy to call them unfair.
When we involve students in the process, something changes.
They see what goes into making a fair, unbiased assessment. (And they start to see how hard "fair and unbiased" really is.)

They understand the reason for quizzes and tests and can help develop questions that reach that end goal.

By seeing the content through a test-maker's eyes, it can make them better test takers -- and help them to study better.

Ask students how they could show what they know on a quiz or test.

Ask them to create a question or two that you can use on the test.

Ask them what feels fair or unfair on quizzes or tests.

The more we make them part of the process, the more they're bought in -- and the less they feel an assessment is something done to them.

QUESTION: Do you have any suggestions or adjustments to these strategies? What other strategies do you use to avoid the "gotcha" game to let students show what they truly know? Let us know in a comment below!

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©2019 Ditch That Textbook by Matt Miller.

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4 classroom test quiz strategies to avoid the gotcha game - Ditch That Textbook

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Assessment If you haven't been nailed by the "gotcha" game when you were a student, I'll bet you've seen it as a teacher. Here's how it works. Students studies diligently. Knows SO much about the topic of a quiz or a test. Student takes quiz/test.

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How to create impactful quizzes for teaching | Research-backed tips

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Frequent low-stake quizzes help students retain knowledge over time. But how do you design a good quiz? Discover tips from pedagogy expert Olav Schewe.

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I'm a huge fan of writing in math class! While I was teaching, I had my 5th graders write in their math journals every single day. Whether they used the journals before the lesson to write down estimations, during class to show their reasoning through a problem, or at the end of class for an exit prompt, the journals were always a safe and not-graded place for students to jot down their thoughts. No matter the prompt, I always learned so much about what they understood by reading their entries each day.

This year, as a math specialist, I get to see student writing in math classes across many grade levels, and it's so incredibly interesting. I'm able to see where it all begins, in kindergarten, before students are even writing explanations in words, to 5th grade, where the writing becomes very articulate. In each lesson I plan with teachers, we incorporate a writing aspect that we use for reflection after the lesson. The students' written pieces, in addition to our classroom observations, help to ground our reflective conversation after the lesson.

When the 3rd grade team and I planned for the lesson seen in this video, Creating a Culture of Collaborative Learning, we created an exit prompt based on the Number Talk we did with the students during class. We gave students the same image we used during class, asked them to choose two mathematical expressions shared during the Number Talk, and show how they were the same. We then used the student responses as the basis for our conversation after the activity to see where students were in their thinking about multiplication. In each of the sample responses below, we learned something about how each student was thinking.

The Commutative Property

The majority of students chose two expressions demonstrating the commutative property of multiplication. Often students see that you can change the order of the numbers in a multiplication problem and the product remains the same, however in the journal entries, we were able to see student understanding of this property in a representation.
16 x 2 = 2 x 16 8 x 4 = 4 x 8 16 x 2 = 2 x 16 and 4 x 8 = 8 x 4
Changing the Number of Groups and Number in Each Group

A few students noticed that when they changed the number of groups and the number of dots in each group, the product remained the same. While these students are not yet articulating how the groups are changing, this work provides a great opportunity to plan future conversations around this idea.

Rearranging the Groups

This response is very similar to the previous responses, however this student is beginning to articulate how the groups are changing from one to another. Instead of having 10 groups of 3, the student explains he takes some dots away and adds them to another group to make 16 groups of 2.

Relating Operations

Some students related expressions based on what they understand about the operations and were able to represent these understandings in the dot image.

While the team and I heard and observed so many interesting things during the Number Talk itself, the journal prompt served as a wonderful formative assessment to look deeper into each student's understanding and the connections they were making.

The use of math journals has transformed the way in which I listen to students' thinking and I'm so excited to see math journaling being used at all different grade levels. The journals offered my students who weren't comfortable sharing the space to do so, while at the same time gave me so much insight into their thinking. I encourage all math teachers to incorporate math journals in their classrooms to allow students not only to explain how they answered a problem, but also to express mathematical connections, understandings, and confusions. It truly informed all of the planning and decision making in my classroom.
Kristin Gray is a National Board Certified fifth grade math teacher at Richard A. Shields Elementary School in the Cape Henlopen School District in Lewes, Delaware and a Teaching Channel Laureate. During her 19 years in education, she has taught 5th-8th grade math, as well as spent two years as a K-5 Math Specialist. She feels fortunate to be involved with Illustrative Mathematics and Teaching Channel on projects developing math tasks, facilitating professional development, and blogging about these experiences. She is always excited to share her love of teaching at conferences such as NCTM, NCSM, ISTE, as well as on her blog. Follow Kristin on Twitter: @MathMinds.

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I'm a huge fan of writing in math class! While I was teaching, I had my 5th graders write in their math journals every single day. Whether they used the journals before the lesson to write down estimations, during class to show their reasoning through a problem, or at the end of class for an exit prompt, the journals were always a safe and not-graded place for students to jot down their thoughts.

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By Andrew Miller

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Grading Transformation

When teachers check for understanding, they are doing so as a means to ensure that students are successful in the summative assessment. It's important to remember that formative assessments are for learning, not necessarily of it. Summative assessments, on the other hand, are often assessments of learning. Consequently, the teacher's grade book is transformed. I wrote about this personal transformation in a previous blog post. By embracing formative assessment, teachers are awarding students at their best, not at their worst. The grade book more accurately reflects student competency of content and skills. Formative assessment leads to more equitable and fair grading practices.

Teaching Transformation

Teachers work smarter, not harder, when they use formative assessments. One of the biggest mistakes a teacher can make with formative assessment is to over-simplify the process of using it to adjust instruction. Formative assessment is actually more nuanced. For example, a teacher collects an exit ticket and discovers that about a third of the class missed a concept. Because of this, she returns the next day and reviews the content with the whole class. Pardon me, but I think that is crazy! Why would you do that? Only a third of the students need that review -- the rest are ready to move on.

Here, formative assessments must be used in making decisions to "feed forward," or make the right decision in terms of instructional next steps. Teachers also need to probe whether or not the mix-up was truly an error or instead just a mistake. A mistake implies that further instruction on that content may not be needed, while an error indicates that instruction must happen, as there are gaps in the learning. These instructional next steps might indeed be whole-class instruction, but they also include one-on-one support, small group instruction, and other important differentiation decisions. Overall, a teacher can give the right instruction at the right time as his teaching becomes responsive to students, rather than responsive to other forces.

Student Learning Transformation

Teachers use formative assessment to let students know where they are in the learning journey. Assessment is no longer a surprise! Student learning becomes transparent and also personalized. In addition to just-in-time learning, students get just-in-time feedback. Teachers rely on formative assessment to give students specific, actionable feedback that they can use to refine their work, seek out resources, and engage in learning that is specific to their needs. Because of this, all students increase their capacity for success. All students are getting what they need when they need it, as opposed to when the teacher guesses they need it. What happens next? Increased engagement! Students are more engaged in the learning because it is relevant and meaningful to them.

Classroom of Empowerment

Another big transformation that occurs when teachers practice formative assessment is a classroom of empowerment. Students are empowered to take ownership of the learning process. They know where they are and can set goals for next steps. They are given the power to "fail forward" and know that it's never too late to learn. Teachers are also empowered to make the right decisions in meeting their needs of their students. In fact, I would take this a step further -- remember that a formative assessment isn't formative until you decide it is. Similarly, a summative assessment isn't summative until you decide that it is. You, as the teacher, use your professional judgment and are empowered to make the right decisions for your students as individuals and your classroom of learners as a whole.

Remember, formative assessments look and sound different -- and frankly, they should. Formative assessment includes oral language and questions, projects or performance assessments, written components, movement and gesture activities, technology tools, and more. These assessments are not always intended to be large assignments, but rather can be quick and efficient ways to check for understanding. I hope my comments here serve to affirm that which you're already doing well. Great teachers know their students, make adjustments, reflect, and honor the learning process. When teachers embrace and regularly use components of formative assessment, they are truly transformative teachers!

How is formative assessment transforming you, your students, and your school?

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Formative Assessment Is Transformational! | Edutopia

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When teachers check for understanding, they are doing so as a means to ensure that students are successful in the summative assessment. It's important to remember that formative assessments are for learning, not necessarily of it. Summative assessments, on the other hand, are often assessments of learning.

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I have a confession to make: I am terrible at handing back papers. That sounds silly, right? I mean, you literally just hand the paper to the kid whose name is at the top.

But teachers everywhere know how disheartening that small act can be. (It can't be just me, right?)

There are the eye rolls and the whispering to each other of "What did you get?" and "She gave me a ___." Next thing you know, the paper you spent so long reading and marking has been shoved into the abyss of the backpack or tossed carelessly in the recycle bin.

Wow, glad I put so much time into that assignment, said no teacher ever.

I honestly got to a point where I would just wait so long to give things back, the kids would kind of forget, and then so would I. Oops.

In English I ask my students to write a lot. I don't grade everything they write, but when it comes to the "big essays"-the graded, polished drafts-what grade they will receive becomes the sole motivator for their writing. This frustrates me, and, in my opinion, distracts them from what they should actually care about: writing.

This intense focus on the all-important grade was my least favorite part, and it was definitely what kept the stack sitting on the counter behind my desk...for an embarrassing amount of time. It really bothered me that kids didn't care about the feedback I put on their essays, not just because I took the time to do it, but because I did it to help them. I want them to grow as writers, and most of them do throughout the year, but so many only seem to care about that number.

I won't lie: It made me angry. Not only did I feel like I had wasted my time, I felt like they just didn't care. And then the snowball of thoughts would start: How will they survive if they don't care about feedback? What's going to happen in college? Or when they get jobs? Ugh! I'm done!

After dealing with this for about nine years, I couldn't take it anymore. I either had to get over it or fix it. Since I'm not usually one to give up, I set out to find a way to get my students to actually read their feedback and care less about the grade.

The Fix for Ignored Feedback

The solution was remarkably easy and accidentally originated out of my laziness (score one for being a little lazy!). Last year, kids had turned in essays on Google Classroom, but rather than pasting a completed rubric into their essay as I usually did, I made hard copies of the rubric and wrote on them. This meant that I could return papers with comments but without grades.

And from this a whole new system was born: Return papers to students with only feedback. Delay the delivery of the actual grade so student focus moves from the grade to the feedback.

The simple act of delaying the grade meant that students had to think about their writing. They had to read their own writing-after a few weeks away from it-and digest my comments, which allowed them to better recognize what they did well or not so well. The response from students was extremely positive; they understood the benefit of rereading their essays and paying attention to feedback. One boy said, "Mrs. Louden, you're a genius. I've never read what a teacher writes on my essay before, and now I have to."

The Plan

1. Grade the Papers
After collecting student papers, grade them (hard copy or electronic) as you usually would with comments on the written piece, but keep the rubric separate.

2. Plan Independent Work
Plan accordingly by creating opportunities for students to do independent or group work for a few days when it's time to return papers to students. This is probably the most vital part of the process, because it will give you time to conference with individual students.

3. Return Papers
When you finish grading the papers, return just the written work to students, not the completed rubric. When I first tried this with students, I put the following directions up on the board when I returned the essays:

Read over your whole essay, including what you wrote and my comments.

Write THREE observations based on your reading and TWO follow-up questions to discuss with me at our conference. Ask about comments, how to improve things, how to do things differently, etc.

Use the rubric (posted online) to grade yourself.

Be ready to discuss all of this.

I now incorporate these instructions into the student copy of the rubric. Below is one page of that rubric, which includes the reflection section.

4. Time to Reflect
Return the essays during class, allowing time to explain, time for kids to read their essays, and time for them to clarify if needed. Encourage them to go slowly. ( Bonus step: Walk around and listen. Hear the difference. Honestly, you probably won't hear a lot of talking or comparing. If they are talking, it will be to themselves about what they are noticing.)

5. Conference with Each Student
This step is where the magic happens.

Since you've planned for independent work, you will have time to meet with each student individually. I do my conferences on a large whiteboard-painted table; I have found that since moving these from my desk to this table, our conferences are more productive. I'm not distracted by the stuff on my desk, kids are able to spread out (Chromebook, reflection, essay, etc.), and as a bonus, we can use the surface of the table when we need to do some planning. These meetings don't have to be more than a couple of minutes per student.

When kids get to my table, I start with "What do you want to talk about?" and let them guide the conference. It is so cool to hear what they have to say. So many of them make comments like "I can't believe I did <insert careless mistake>" or "I'm sorry I turned it in like this" or "I'm embarrassed; I see so many mistakes!" Or my favorite: "You specifically told us not to do this." The level of reflection is deeper than any I've ever encountered. I assure them that it is fine and I don't expect perfection, but on the inside I'm so excited that they're seeing the things I see.

Next they usually ask questions. This is exciting because some of their questions make perfect teachable moments! I have watched many students grow this year from these conversations. Take Alex, for example. He writes the wordiest sentences I've ever read, but he's gotten to the point where he puts his own comments on his essay as he writes so we can discuss while he's still in the writing stage. At least half of these are related to wordiness. I'm excited that he's learned to identify it, if not quite how to fix it yet.

Finally, I end by asking students how they graded themselves according to the rubric. I enjoy this part because more often than not, they were much harsher on themselves than I was. I then share the rubric with the grade and the rest of my general comments. For once, kids are usually happy about their grade because it was higher than they expected, contrary to the old days when they'd say "she gave me C" but they thought they deserved an A.

6. Revision
I always offer students the opportunity to rewrite their essay. Above all else, my goal is to help students become better writers. If this means they have to do it a couple of times, then so be it. Depending on the assignment, these are the usual requirements:

The student must meet with me 1 to 3 times (depends on the student and the essay) before it is due. These meetings are quick "check-in" style meetings: What are you planning to do? What have you done? What questions do you have?

The student must make substantial revisions, not just grammatical edits.

The student must turn in the original and the updated draft on time.

And that's it! Okay, looking back over what I said, it sounds like a lot, but really it's very easy for you. I think this is the best change I have made to the writing process in the last few years. Students have become more reflective ( and sympathetic of how long it takes me to grade-haha! ), their writing has improved, and I return papers much more quickly-and happily-than ever before. ♦

Stick around.
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Delaying the Grade: How to Get Students to Read Feedback

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You spend hours marking and commenting on student work, and then they don't even read your feedback. The solution is all in how you time it.

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Student Self Assessment by  James H. McMillan and Jessica Hearn

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Student Self Assessment by  James H. McMillan and Jessica Hearn

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In the current era of standards-based education, student self-assessment stands alone in its promise of improved student motivation and engagement, and learning. Its powerful impact on student performance empowers students to guide their own learning and internalize the criteria for judging success.

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Created using PowToon -- Free sign up at http://www.powtoon.com/ . Make your own animated videos and animated presentations for free. PowToon is a free tool that allows you to develop cool animated clips and animated presentations for your website, office meeting, sales pitch, nonprofit fundraiser, product launch, video resume, or anything else you could use an animated explainer video.

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In this video I discuss the topic of formative assessment or as I now refer to it as, "formative evaluation." I am a Ph.D. candidate with Michigan State University in the field of educational psychology. There are many flavors of formative evaluation and I am using the one outlined by Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam in the article "Inside the Black Box."

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Formal Definition found in Transformative Assessment

	by W. James Popham

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Formal Definition found in Transformative Assessment

	by W. James Popham

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"Formative assessment is a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning to improve students' achievement of intended instructional outcomes."

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By Rick Wormeli

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When Students Become Teachers - Rigor, Assessment & Accountability - Dr. Lodge McCammon

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“If you can both listen to children and accept their answers not as things to just be judged right or wrong but as pieces of information which may reveal what the child is thinking, you will have taken a giant step toward becoming a master teacher, rather than merely a disseminator of information.”

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5 Fantastic, Fast, Formative Assessment Tools

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5 Fantastic, Fast, Formative Assessment Tools

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Feedback is a word we use unthinkingly and inaccurately.  We smile at a student, say “Good job!” and call it feedback.  We write “B-” at the top of a paper and consider it feedback. We share a score on the state test with a student and his parents and consider it feedback.

But feedback is something different. It is useful information about performance. It is not praise, it is not evaluation, it is not a number on a standardized test. So, true feedback is critical –perhaps the key element – in effective learning.

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"Academic feedback is more strongly and consistently related to achievement than any other teaching behavior.  This relationship is consistent regardless of grade, socioeconomic status, race or school setting.”

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“The most powerful single modification that enhances achievement is feedback. The simplest prescription for improving education must be ‘dollops’ of feedback.”

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“Assessments for learning happen while learning is still underway. These are the assessments that we conduct throughout teaching and learning to diagnose student needs, plan our next steps in instruction, provide students with feedback they can use to improve the quality of their work, and help students feel in control of their journey to success. This is not about accountability – these are assessments of learning. This is about getting better.”

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“It is not the nature of the test that earns the label formative or summative but the use to which that test's results will be put.”

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Christopher, S. Education Leadership, Dec 2007

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Christopher, S. Education Leadership, Dec 2007

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“When homework is used as a formative assessment, students have multiple opportunities to practice, get feedback from the teacher, and improve. Homework becomes a safe place to try out new skills without penalty, just as athletes and musicians try out their skills on the practice field or in rehearsals. Effective homework is the rehearsal before the final event.”

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Reinhart, 2000 as cited in Skillful Teacher

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Reinhart, 2000 as cited in Skillful Teacher

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"My definition of a good teacher has changed from ‘one who explains things so well that students understand’ to ‘one who gets students to explain so well that they can be understood.’ ”