Formative Assessment Overview

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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Click to Start

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.

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. 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. 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. 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.
All Cards Compare Check!
  1. Attribute:Both self- and peer-assessment are important for providing students an opportunity to think meta-cognitively about their learning.
  2. Attribute:A classroom culture in which teachers and students are partners in learning should be established.
  3. Attribute:Learning goals and criteria for success should be clearly identified and communicated to students.
  4. Attribute: Students should be provided with evidence-based feedback that is linked to the intended instructional outcomes and criteria for success.
  5. Attribute: Learning progressions should clearly articulate the sub-goals of the ultimate learning goal.
  1. Practice: Give guidance that helps students realize they can do what they need to do. Provide clear feedback and achievable steps toward improvement. Help students see the connections between specific strategies that they used and their accomplishments.
  2. Practice: Raise the quality of classroom discourse. Ask questions that make students think, not regurgitate information; students will not only learn to think, but they will also learn that successful students need to think.
  3. Practice: Give descriptive feedback that is tied to the learning target. Describe students' work and the processes they used to do it; make sure they understand the connection.
  4. Practice: Clearly communicate to students the learning target in your words, in instructional activities, and in assignments.
  1. Level: Teachers consistently apply formative assessment to the degree that its use transforms a traditional, comparison-dominated classroom, where the main purpose of assessment is to assign grades, into an atypical, learning-dominated classroom, where the main purpose of assessment is to improve the quality of teaching and learning.
  2. Level: Students use evidence of their current skills-and-knowledge status to decide whether to adjust the procedures they're using in an effort to learn something.
  3. Level: Teachers collect evidence by which they decide whether to adjust their current or immediately-incoming instruction in order to improve the effectiveness of that instruction.
  4. Level: Learning progressions provide guidance to teachers regarding what to assess and when to assess it as part of the formative assessment process.
  1. Strategy: Peer: Activating learners as instructional resources for one another
  2. Strategy: Peer: Understanding and sharing learning intentions and criteria for success
  3. Strategy: Learner: Understanding learning intentions and success criteria for success
  4. Strategy: Learner: Activating learners as the owners of their own learning
  5. Strategy: Teacher: Providing feedback that moves learning forward
  6. Strategy: Teacher: Engineering effective classroom discussions, questions, activities, and tasks that elicit evidence of learning
  7. Strategy: Teacher: Clarifying and sharing learning intentions and criteria for success

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).

Green cards

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.

Blue cards

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.

Pink cards

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.

Yellow cards

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.