This interactive is designed to help you get an initial feel for what formative assessment is all about. We recommend trying this interactive before we introduce what we call the "critical and supporting aspects" of formative assessment, in Chapter 1 of Bringing Math Students into the Formative Assessment Equation: Tools and Strategies for the Middle Grades.
Whether you already know something about formative assessment or are brand new to the topic, we think that trying this interactive before reading the "Overview of the Aspects of Formative Assessment" section of the book will help to activate your thinking about the topic. This interactive also captures and shares how the authors and others are thinking about formative assessment. You'll be able to compare your thoughts with the aspects we have chosen, as well.
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Step 1. Review the definitions to look for similarities and differences. In the next step, think about the areas of overlap and areas of difference in these definitions as you start to identify characteristics of formative assessment. Click the "Next" button when you're ready to continue. (To see the source reference for a definition and the associated characteristics in the next step, click on the definition.)
Step 2. Categorize the Characteristic cards, grouping similar cards into 4–6 categories by dragging them to one of the large boxes below. You can use the text fields within each box to label your categories. It's OK if you don't have a card of each color in each category. (Notice that the characteristics are labeled as Attributes, Principles, Levels, and Strategies).
To help you get started, click the "All Cards" button. You can look through all the cards easily to get a sense of them before you try sorting them.
Step 3. When you have the cards sorted into categories, click the "Compare" button below. You'll be able to choose from some preset categories that we have picked—for each of your categories, choose the one that matches as closely as you can. Just because we chose different categories doesn't mean yours are incorrect. We just looked at this differently than you did.
Step 4. You may want to change positions for some of the cards to match our categories more closely.
Step 5. With all the comparison categories set, click the "Check!" button. (If you haven't compared categories yet, you won't have the check button.) Cards that we feel belong with a different category will turn red. (Note that some could arguably be placed in more than one category, so again, if you choose differently, it doesn't mean you're wrong.) You can redistribute these and click the "Check!" button again.
The green cards are from the Council of Chief State School Officers, in "Attributes of Formative Assessment" by Sarah McManus.
The blue cards come from Susan Brookhart, Connie Moss, and Beverly Long, in "Formative Assessment That Empowers", Educational Leadership Volume 66, Number 3 (November 2008).
The pink cards come from W. James Popham, in Transformative Assessment, published by ASCD (2008).
The yellow cards come from Dylan Wiliam, in Embedded Formative Assessment, published by Solution Tree Press (2011).
Source: McManus, Sarah. (2008). Attributes of formative assessment. Washington, DC: Council of Chief State School Officers.
Definition: Formative assessment is a process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides feedback to adjust ongoing teaching and learning to improve students' achievement of intended instructional outcomes.
Source: Brookhart, S., Moss, C., & Long, B. (2008). Formative assessment that empowers. Educational Leadership, 6(3), 52–57.
Definition: By providing students and teachers with specific, regular feedback on how well students are mastering key concepts and skills, formative assessment helps teachers create opportunities that maximize the chances of learning happening.
Source: Popham, W. James. (2008). Transformative Assessment. Alexandria, VA: ASCD
Definition: Formative assessment is a planned process in which assessment-elicited evidence of students' status is used by teachers to adjust their ongoing instructional procedures or by students to adjust their current learning tactics.
Source: Wiliam, Dylan. (2011). Embedded Formative Assessment. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press
Definition: An assessment functions formatively to the extent that evidence about student achievement is elicited, interpreted, and used by teachers, learners, or their peers to make decisions about the next steps in instruction that are likely to be better, or better founded, than the decisions they would have made in the absence of that evidence.