If you were to use an analogy for assessing student learning, think baseball, hockey, piano, gymnastics, musical theatre or any other sport or activity that involves practicing before a game, recital, performance or show.
Formative assessment is all the practice that a student does during the learning process to gain skills, attitudes, and understanding of the concept being taught. In sports, this would be attending the practices where the fundamentals of the game are taught and learned through various ways, skills are perfected through drills, and game awareness is learned through scrimmages. In the school classroom, the students practice what they are learning when they do assignments, homework, quizzes etc. Student are given practice time to develop, learn, and take risks without fear of penalty.
Summative Assessment: It's Game Day!! After a concept, skill, or process has been taught and practiced there will come a time when students are expected to demonstrate their learning before moving on to a new concept. These tests, unit exams, projects, etc will count towards the students grades.
Formative and summative tasks will be assigned a 1-5 grade:
5-Student demonstrates an excellent performance and understanding of the learner outcomes. (“WOW!)
4 -Student demonstrates a consistent performance and proficient understanding of the learner outcome. (“YES!”)
3-Student demonstrates an acceptable performance and basic understanding of the learner outcome. (“ON THE RIGHT TRACK!”)
2- Student demonstrates a developing understanding with inconsistencies in understanding the learner outcome. (“GETTING THERE”)
1- Student is experiencing difficulties meeting the learner outcome (“NOT YET”)
If you were to use an analogy for assessing student learning, think baseball, hockey, track, dance, piano, gymnastics, musical theatre, or any other sport or activity that involves practicing before a game, recital, performance, or show.
Formative assessment is all the practice that a student does during the learning process to gain skills, attitudes, and understandings of the concepts being taught. In sports, this would be attending the practices where the fundamentals of the game are taught and learned through various ways, skills are perfected through drills, and game awareness is learned through scrimmages. In the school classroom, the students practice what they are learning when they do "assignments", "homework", "quizzes"... During the learning process, students know where they are going, where the are now, and how they can close the gap. There are strategies that we use as teachers to help the students answer these questions. They include: providing clear learning targets, showing students examples of strong and weak work, providing feedback, encouraging students to set goals and self assess, providing direction for improvement in small, manageable amounts, and self reflecting. As in the sporting venue or school classroom the student is given practice time to develop and learn without penalty. Therefore, these tasks do NOT have grades assigned to them and do NOT count towards their report card mark.
Tasks that are formative, will be given
N = needs improvement
A = acceptable
E = excellent
so that you can see how your child is progressing in their learning.
Summative Assessment
It's Game Day!!!! After a concept, skill, or process has been taught and practiced there will come a time when students are expected to demonstrate their learning before moving onto new concepts. These "tests", "unit exams", "projects"... will count towards the students' report card grade.
Tasks that are summative, will be assigned a 1-5 grade
5=Student demonstrates an excellent performance and has a complete understanding of the learner outcomes. ("WOW")
4 =Student demonstrates a consistent performance which indicates a proficient understanding of the learner outcomes. ("YES")
3 =Student demonstrates an acceptable performance which indicates a partial understanding of the learner outcomes. ("ON THE RIGHT TRACK")
2= Student demonstrates a developing understanding with inconsistencies in understanding the learner outcomes. ("GETTING THERE")
1= Student is experiencing difficulty meeting learner outcomes. ("NOT YET")
To understand how your child achieved on the summative assessment, and demonstrated their understanding of the individual outcomes taught, I will provide a "test map" that breaks down the summative assessment (ie. test, unit exam, etc) to provide detailed information. Each outcome will be given a grade based on the 1-5 scale. This will provide a clearer picture of the areas of strengths and weaknesses. For performance based learning outcomes, a rubric will be used to assess and communicate student achievement.
On the report card, individual outcomes will be chunked into the major strands of each subject area, and one grade will be determined.
It's Game Day!!!! After a concept, skill, or process has been taught and practiced there will come a time when students are expected to demonstrate their learning before moving onto new concepts. These "tests", "unit exams", "projects"... will count towards the students' report card grade.
Tasks that are summative, will be assigned a 1-5 grade
5=Student demonstrates an excellent performance and has a complete understanding of the learner outcomes. ("WOW")
4 =Student demonstrates a consistent performance which indicates a proficient understanding of the learner outcomes. ("YES")
3 =Student demonstrates an acceptable performance which indicates a partial understanding of the learner outcomes. ("ON THE RIGHT TRACK")
2= Student demonstrates a developing understanding with inconsistencies in understanding the learner outcomes. ("GETTING THERE")
1= Student is experiencing difficulty meeting learner outcomes. ("NOT YET")
To understand how your child achieved on the summative assessment, and demonstrated their understanding of the individual outcomes taught, I will provide a "test map" that breaks down the summative assessment (ie. test, unit exam, etc) to provide detailed information. Each outcome will be given a grade based on the 1-5 scale. This will provide a clearer picture of the areas of strengths and weaknesses. For performance based learning outcomes, a rubric will be used to assess and communicate student achievement.
On the report card, individual outcomes will be chunked into the major strands of each subject area, and one grade will be determined.