Formative Assessment Strategies

Are you looking for low-stress, high-return formative assessment strategies to use in your classes?  One great resource is Page Keeley’s newest book, Science Formative Assessment:  75 Practical Strategies for Linking Assessment, Instruction, and Learning from NSTApress and Corwin Press (2008).  As promised in the title, Dr. Keeley describes 75 formative assessment strategies and also includes information on how each strategy promotes learning, informs instruction, can be modified within the science class and/or used in other content areas, and things to be aware of (caveats) when using a particular strategy.  The ease of use, time demand and cognitive demand for each strategy are also given.  I like them so much that I made up an Excel document I’ve used to make two-sided cards for each strategy.  The front of the card lists the strategy and the page numbers where it is described in the book while the back gives a description of how to use the strategy.  If you would like the cards in an electronic format, send me an email request.  You’ll find some familiar cooperative learning strategies in the book as well as several things you may already be using but just haven’t thought of as formative assessments. 

#24) Human Scatterplots – This is a quick, visual way for teachers and students to get an immediate classroom snapshot of the class’ thinking and the level of confidence students have in their ideas.  The teacher poses a question to the class and gives several possible answers.  The students then position themselves on a “floor graph” based on their response to the question AND on their level of confidence in their response.  For example, if the student chooses “A” as their response then they would form a line with any other student(s) who also chose “A”.  The teacher would have the students choose a spot along a continuum with one end representing students who are very sure about their answer and the other end representing those who are very unsure.  As an extension of this activity, the teacher might group students in various ways based on where they are standing.  For example, students from opposite ends of the same line could be grouped for discussion or students who are in different lines could be grouped together to discuss their thoughts.

 #28) I Used to Think…But Now I Know – Students are asked to compare verbally or in writing their ideas at the beginning of a lesson or instructional sequence to the ideas they have after completing the lesson(s).  Both parts of this reflection piece occur after instruction.  A modification would be to include a section in which the students explain why their ideas changed (what happened during the instruction process that changed their thinking). 

Opportunities

Several emails have come in lately with news of conferences, contests and more.  Summaries and websites to visit for more information are given below:

·         Armada Project, Research & Mentoring Experiences, K-12 teachers – This project provides ocean, polar and environmental science research and peer mentoring for teachers. (http://www.armadaproject.org/)