Using a 3-stages approach to develop the skill of using formative assessment
Introduction
“Teaching without formative assessment is like painting with your eyes closed”
(Craig Barton)
Imagine you are having a professional learning teams (PLT) meeting, where the topic of the discussion is using formative assessment to enhance learning. Each of you started the session by sharing an assessment tool you have come across. Rubrics, peer assessment, checklists and using EdTech are some ideas the team shared. But in everyone’s head is about the intensive preparation and the complexity of conducting the assessment.
The team had an intense debate about the complexity of using the assessment tools. For example, how long must we observe each student before we know their skill levels? What if nobody on the team passes the ball to them? How can we assess if they can apply their skills in practice but not in the game?
The team concluded that it is not easy to assess, so you decided to use only one assessment rubric to evaluate once during the 12th lesson of the module. When you went home, you started to realise, "Are we doing a summative assessment now or a formative assessment? "
Why do we need formative assessment?
If you have the same experience, you are not alone. I, too, have had similar experiences a number of times before. Before we talk about what we can do, we need to understand why we need formative assessment.
But first, let’s talk about how we can help students improve any skill.
So how do we improve in any skill? Practice. But not just practice, deliberate practice. Deliberate practice, as discussed by Ericsson and Pool (2016) in the book Peak, is purposeful practice for the sake of mastery. Let’s look at an example of what deliberate practice looks like in the case of learning to cycle.
Clear goals
Imagine you were teaching your daughter to ride a bicycle. You asked her to try riding a bicycle without safety wheels for the first time. Did she know why she is riding without safety wheels? If she did not, she would feel frustrated.
Challenging yet manageable
She tried to pedal the bicycle but had never pedalled in a circular motion before, so her feet kept losing grip on the pedal. She also needed to balance herself, and you kept asking her to look straight ahead. It was overwhelming for her. Did you know she was overwhelmed by so many focuses? She started crying because she was unable to handle so many challenges.
Crying was a feedback to you that it was too overwhelming for her. You went home to research how to learn to cycle easily. The next day, you removed the pedal and brought her to a gentle slope, so she only needed to focus on balancing.
After a few tries, she was able to lift her legs for 2 seconds. You were happy, but not her, because she thought she was not talented enough to learn cycling fast enough. She got impatient and wanted to lift her legs longer, but it only made things worse.
Do you know she’s losing hope?
Growth mindset
Because of her facial expression, you knew she was losing hope. You started motivating her: “You are doing very well! But you need to be patient and keep trying. That’s how we all learn how to ride!” She became motivated and continued to persevere. After two hours, she managed to ride the bicycle.
So, what is formative assessment?
Just like in the case of learning to ride a bicycle, students may struggle to understand what success looks like in the activity. They think they are achieving the learning goals, but teachers see it otherwise. They also may not know that the learning task is too challenging. They may see success once or twice during practice, but because they are not successful most of the time, they might think they are not talented in learning the sport. They could also feel overwhelmed by the expectation of the challenge and lose the motivation to keep trying, especially when they see other students meeting the learning goals.
The question is, do we know their challenges? When we constantly ask ourselves, “Do we know if they are struggling?” and “Do the students know how to make the environment safer and motivating for themselves?” we are switching to a more student-centred way of teaching. To help us answer the questions, we use a variety of formal and informal assessment activities throughout the lesson.
In short, formative assessment is any activity that checks how well a student is learning. The information from these assessment activities is used to adapt teaching and learning approaches, which leads to improvements in learner outcomes.
Breaking down the skill of using formative assessment into three stages
“In AFL, it is the purpose of assessment, rather than the nature of it, that is important.”
(Teaching and Learning Team, n.d.)
If you have always been giving clear learning goals and observing their practice to see if they are working towards the learning goal, then congratulations! You have started the process of formative assessment — observation! However, formative assessment includes taking a pedagogical action, such as giving feedback. If you have consistently been observing the student's practice and giving feedback, then congratulations once again! You have completed a formative assessment process during the lesson!
Although we can safely tell our head of department (HOD) that we have been using formative assessment throughout the lesson just by observing and giving feedback, we need to know that formative assessment is a skill that requires reflective practice to improve.
To simplify how we can improve the skill, we can look at assessment in three stages (Ministry of Education, Singapore, 2019):
- Communicating with students the purpose and objectives of the lessons.
- Integrating various progress-monitoring assessment practices in teaching and learning.
- Gathering evidence and providing feedback to students for improvement.
Stage 1: Developing the skills of checking for understanding of the learning goal
The first step to improving the skill of using formative assessment is to practice the habit of checking if the students understand the purpose of doing the task. This aims to get students to have the end in mind throughout the learning task constantly.
For example, if you are planning a routine of running two rounds whenever the students come for PE lessons, you may want to think about the purpose of the run. If the purpose of the run is to build a habit, then you may want to think about how to help students understand how habits are developed. It could mean asking the students to think if they want to run again tomorrow. Then, you can ask them to discuss how they can run so that they find it enjoyable. If you anticipate talking for too long, you could send them a short video clip on “Habits formation”.
As such, when you execute the plan, you could start by explaining the rationale of the run. We can also ask the students to self-assess by asking themselves the question during the run, “By running at this pace, would I want to run again tomorrow?” After the run, you also ask them to talk to their partners about the same question again. By constantly reminding them of the purpose of the run, the students would be more motivated to run the next lesson.
Having the end in mind helps motivate students to stay focused on the task and find ways to achieve the learning goals (Broder-Fingert, 2014).
Stage 2: Developing the skill of integrating progress-monitoring assessment into each task
Now that we are sure the students know the learning goals well, we need to improve our skills in integrating progress-monitoring assessment into every task.
In this stage, we try to ensure that the students have some means of receiving feedback on every task. The more often the students see their progress, the more likely they are to be motivated to work towards the learning goal.
For example, if the learning goal of the 2v2 possession game is running into space to receive a pass, then, as you plan the possession game, you need to visualise whether the students can know if they are running into space to receive a pass.
One way is to get them to be in groups of 5s so one can be the peer coach. Another way is to plan a team talk for the four students to give feedback to one another and discuss whether they need to change the rules so that everyone can meet the learning goals.
As we try to develop our proficiency in integrating formative assessment into every task, we are actually looking deeper into understanding the students’ challenges and helping them find solutions. Slowly but surely, the design of our task would become more student-centric.
Stage 3: Developing the skill of closing the learning gap of each student
The most basic form of formative assessment is to see what the students can do and give feedback based on what you see. For example, if we see a student always throwing the basketball towards the right side of the hoop, we can tell them to throw more towards the left.
If you want to understand why the student threw towards the right, you could examine his shooting posture. One way to correct his posture is to ask him to practice the correct action without the ball.
If you think this is too time-consuming, you can plan the shooting task using a peer coaching approach. With a simple checklist, one student will always look at their partner’s shooting posture and give corrective feedback. You can give a few suggestions to the peer coaches, such as practising without the ball, a lighter ball, or standing nearer to the hoop.
If you think everyone has different learning needs because of their physical abilities or prior knowledge, then you could get the students to co-construct ways to shoot the ball. You may also want to let the students design their own success criteria. As such, you are also helping the students to develop critical thinking skills.
You may also anticipate that some students would not see as much success as others, hence becoming less motivated. So you may decide to walk around and give positive affirmation to the students’ efforts. This could also develop a growth mindset.
Conclusion
It can be complicated if we look at all stages of formative assessment as one task. That is why most of us felt intimidated by it. Suppose we ask someone who has never driven a car before to drive the car. No matter how clear you are in explaining the various steps to driving a car, the person would still give up after a while. He might tell you, “I think I’m fine with taking the bus.” All of us who know how to drive know that we learned driving by small incremental steps. First, learn the biting point, then the steering wheels and so on.
Similarly, if we look at formative assessment as a skill, we need to break the skill into small incremental steps. It should be easy for us to start practising observing if the students know the learning goal. After some time, we develop an unconscious competence in executing every task that also helps the students to know what they are working toward. Then, we look at how to build our competency in integrating progress-monitoring assessment in every task. Lastly, we develop the skill to plan interventions that will help close the learning gap of the wide range of learning needs.
It might look like a long process, but when we focus on small attainable steps in each lesson, it can actually make the learning process enjoyable. Over time, we will develop an unconscious competent in using formative assessment, just like driving a car.
References
Broder-Fingert, S. (2014, January 14). Guest post: Begin with the end in mind. Engaging Minds. https://engagingmindsonline.com/blog-posts/blog-guest-post-begin-with-the-end-in-mind
Ericsson, A., & Pool, R. (2016). Peak: How All of Us Can Achieve Extraordinary Things. Random House.
Greenstein, L. (2010). What teachers really need to know about formative Assessment. ASCD.
Ministry of Education, Singapore. (2019). PE Assessment Resource Guide.
Teaching and Learning Team. (n.d.). Getting started with Assessment for Learning. Cambridge International Education. https://cambridge-community.org.uk/professional-development/gswafl/index.html
Van Den Berg, G. (2004). The use of assessment in the development of higher-order thinking skills. Africa Education Review, 1(2), 279–294. https://doi.org/10.1080/18146620408566285
