Alicia Soares is an experienced educator in Jamaica, and in her role as Ambassador has shared her thoughts and strategies on Formative Assessment.
Formative assessment is used to keep track of students’ progress, monitoring their attainment levels and as teachers we can use this technique to help plan lessons and adjust our teachers to ensure all students make progress.
Here is what she says.
It allows teachers and students the ability to ensure that meaningful learning is taking place. It also enables teachers to try new approaches and methods as well as judging their own effectiveness. Students are able to experiment with different learning activities without fear that they’ll be punished if they should fail.
Formative Assessment is a critical tool educators can use to unlock in-depth information on students’ performance. For example, in my classroom, Formative Assessment is used to identify students’ strengths and weaknesses. I am able to use the evidence to make instructional adjustments on students’ grades and performance tasks results freely. I am able to note whether I should continue on a particular topic or move on. I am also able to change my instructional methods to suit students’ learning styles as well as or use a variation of techniques. I’m also able to give students valuable feedback on the spot and in return receive feedback from my students.
Students are able to rectify issues they are having on the spot – It also helps students to be more involved and productive towards their own learning. My colleagues, please let me know some ways in which you use Formative Assessment in your classroom.
I have several students with special needs in my classroom and as such, Formative Assessment is a very important tool for me. I am able to give them explicit instructions as well as listen to misinformation they might have or clear up grey areas that they might have.
Alicia has shared some practical strategies and reasons as to how formative assessment is an important tool for educators in the classroom.
