ASSESSMENT

4 Practical Formative Assessment Tools for Daily Teaching Success

27 February 2024/ By Zineb DJOUB

Formative assessment is an ongoing process where teachers diagnose learning problems, monitor student learning, give quality feedback, and adjust instruction to help them learn. Students are also responsible for tracking and assessing their own progress. Yet, teachers should provide multiple opportunities for students to show their learning in a range of different knowledge representations (e.g., explanation, demonstration, representation, discussion). Collecting frequently evidence or detailed information in relation to the learning goal might be challenging and time-intensive given the workload of teaching. Therefore, to make formative assessment an integral part of the learning experience, teachers need to incorporate the right formative assessment tools that align with their objectives and classroom context.

To help you out with such a process, here are four formative assessment tools that are both efficient and simple to generate for your daily teaching needs.

1. Concept mapping

Concept maps can be powerful tools not just for helping students understand concepts, and construct and articulate conceptual definitions (conceptualizing), but also for gathering information about their understanding during the learning process.

By drawing a graph that represents their structural knowledge about a certain concept or subject, we can assess students’ prior knowledge, and their understanding of covered materials, and identify common misconceptions.

How to use concept maps as formative assessment tools in the classroom?

At the beginning of a new unit or lesson, ask students to create a concept map representing what they already know about the topic. This helps to assess their prior knowledge.

After the lesson, have students create a concept map that represents their understanding of the lesson’s concept, then analyse them to identify common misconceptions. Discuss those misconceptions in class and encourage students to revise their concept maps accordingly.

Invite students to update their concept maps periodically throughout a unit or lesson while comparing early and later versions. This provides a snapshot of their evolving understanding over time and helps them see how they’re progressing.

Encourage students to use concept maps as a self-assessment tool by asking them to reflect on their own understanding by comparing their concept maps to a model or class consensus and identifying their learning needs.

To facilitate the creation and sharing of concept maps, you can share with students some user-friendly digital concept mapping tools to use such as Bubbl.us, Popplet, Padlet, and Coggle.

How to score concept maps?

You can use the following categories to score concept maps and assign values for each:

• Relationships (if valid): Whether the relationship between concepts and the linking line with the label is meaningful and valid.
• Hierarchy: Whether the user can incorporate hierarchy into the structure
• Cross-link (if valid and significant):  Whether one segment of the concept is meaningfully connected with the other segment of the concept hierarchy.
• Examples (if valid): Whether the labels of concepts appropriately link to relevant examples.

 

Remember to provide written comments, one-on-one discussions, or peer feedback on students’ concept maps and encourage them to reflect on the feedback and make the necessary revisions.

2. Peer teaching

One of the most effective formative assessment tools is students’ peer teaching. This does not only provide insights into individual comprehension and mastery of skills, but it also fosters a collaborative and interactive learning environment among students.

When articulating their thoughts and ideas, students gain a deeper understanding of and practice what they’ve learned. In turn, their peers can share their ideas, learn from the discussion, and reflect on this peer teaching experience.

How to use peer teaching as a formative assessment tool?

Encourage students to teach a concept or skill to their peers during each lesson presentation. Remember that you’re not supposed to re-explain your content more than twice, so invite your students to do so.

You can also incorporate peer teaching during:

-peer-led discussions; where students collectively explore a topic,

-collaborative projects; where they work together to create a presentation or lesson,

-and after returning corrected assignments; where they peer teach specific learning points or concepts that were commonly misunderstood or need further clarification based on the assignments.

Clearly outline the criteria for effective teaching for students, such as clarity, engagement, and the ability to address questions. You can develop rubrics specifically tailored for assessing peer teaching.

In all peer teaching sessions, be sure to observe them, paying attention to and documenting how well the student explains the material, uses examples, and engages their peers.

Further, to create an assessment for learning experience, provide constructive feedback for students regarding their teaching techniques, clarity, and effectiveness.

Reflection is also key to their learning progress. So, encourage them to reflect on their own peer teaching experience by identifying what went well, areas for improvement, and how they might approach teaching the concept differently next time.

3. Questioning

Questioning is an essential tool for learning. Research has shown that such a process is no longer a tool merely for probing an answer but essentially an instrument to help students think beyond the answers (Walsh & Sattes, 2005).

Questioning is, indeed, a source of students’ engagement, curiosity, and critical thinking.

Teachers can also use of questions as formative assessment tools.

How to use questioning as a formative assessment tool?

Questioning is an ongoing process that goes over the lesson. You can ask questions to review information previously taught, and then monitor the students’ replies. This helps identify specific learning difficulties so that appropriate support can be given.

Your questions can range from lower-order to higher-order thinking questions throughout the lesson stages. So, you can address three types of questions (Sweeting, 1994) to assess students:

Reinforcement: These are meant to ensure that students have grasped important information and ideas.

For instance: “Can you provide one specific event that acted as a catalyst for the tensions between the American colonies and Britain, leading to the Revolutionary War?”

Probing: These questions aim to extend, deepen, and refine students’ understanding.

For instance: “Can you identify and discuss one major challenge faced by the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War and how it impacted the course of the war?”

Deductive questions: These questions encourage students to make new, larger, connections between/among facts, ideas, etc. that they already possess knowledge of.

For instance: “Considering the principles outlined in the Declaration of Independence, how do you think these ideas influenced the American colonists’ decision to pursue independence? Provide specific examples from the document to support your analysis.”

To learn more about how to make your questioning strategic, i.e., what kinds of questions you should raise, when, and how to address them, check out this post: Strategic Questioning: What Every Teacher Needs to Know to Boost Students’ Understanding.

If you find creating and posing questions time-consuming, there are effective tech tools that can help you create quizzes, polls, and exit tickets for instant feedback. Examples of these tools include Socrative, Quizizz, Poll Everywhere, Formative, and Kahoot!

4. Interviews

This assessment strategy can help teachers elicit information from students through oral interaction. Indeed, using interviews in class can support you in probing for understanding, feelings, opinions, and perceptions as well as predicting behaviours.

So, the more you interact with students and listen to them, the better you understand their needs and concerns.

How to use interviews as formative assessment tools?

It is important to create a formal interview to help elicit the answers you are looking for without wasting your instructional time.

For this purpose, you should define your learning objectives or what you want to assess, then prepare your questions and decide if these will be raised during a one-to-one conference setting or group setting (individual or group interview).

Your questions need to address not only students’ understanding of lessons but also their mastery of skills or abilities that are valued in the curriculum. So, they should go beyond recalling (closed questions) to explaining, analyzing, or applying their knowledge.

Use follow-up questions to gather further information, obtain clarification, and determine positions.

Also, to make your assessment more consistent and structured use a rubric or assessment criteria that clarify the expectations for different levels of performance.

During such interviews, take notes or record key points from students’ responses reflecting both the content of their answers and the way they communicate them.

After the interviews, provide constructive feedback to students (verbal, written, or both) by highlighting their strengths and areas for improvement.

Besides the above tips remember that for successful interviews, it’s essential to create a comfortable and supportive environment as students can’t feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and answers in an environment plugged with distractions and disturbances.

To conclude,

Concept mapping, peer teaching, questioning, and interviewing are practical formative assessment tools that can help provide valuable insights into student progress and enhance the learning experience. By integrating these formative assessment tools into your daily routine, you can positively impact your students’ learning journey.

References

Sweeting, A. (1994). Questioning. Hong Kong: Longman Hong Kong.

Walsh, J. A., and Sattes, B. D. (2005). Quality Questioning: Research-based Practice to Engage
Every Learner. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.