Formative Assessment Tasks
These formative assessment tasks were created by the ISBE Content Specialists using IAR (PARCC) and SAT released items. For more information on how to create, implement, and use the data collected from these items, check out the 2 part #ILMathCom video and accompanying materials available on the #ILMathCom page in the archives section, http://www.mathteachersinaction.org/ilmathcom.html.
Here is a template to make your own formative assessment tasks.
Here is a template to make your own formative assessment tasks.
Grade 4
Grade 5
Formative Assessment Feedback Kit
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*posted for review - click here to provide feedback on this tool
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This Formative Assessment Feedback Kit supports teachers in providing feedback to students. With the shift away from direct instruction toward student-centered and task-based instruction comes a need to evaluate student work with rubrics and provide meaningful feedback to students.
Included in this kit is a:
Productive and unproductive feedback characteristics
While a score of 63% on a math assignment may tell us something about a student’s understanding, it does not tell us much. In order for assessment to be productive, we have to provide formative assessment opportunities to students, but also provide them with feedback that will help them decide where they are, where they want to be, and how to get from one to the other. This one-page document is used to consider how your beliefs can impact the usefulness of the feedback you provide. Use this one-pager as a self-assessment of what you are currently doing, a discussion tool in professional learning, or as a way to identify areas of personal growth in providing feedback to students.
Peer Feedback
Peer feedback offers many advantages. It allows students a chance to get timely suggestions for improvement, usually within the same class period. Peer feedback is not only beneficial to the student receiving comments, but also the student providing the feedback. “People providing the feedback benefit just as much as the recipient, because they are forced to internalize the learning intentions and success criteria in the context of someone else’s work, which is less emotionally charged than one’s one” (William, 2006, p.6). When teachers collect peer feedback, they have an opportunity not only to see how well the reviewee understands the work, but also how well the reviewer understands the learning target and success criteria.
The Peer Feedback Tool helps build a positive classroom culture by identifying the expectations in giving constructive rather than critical feedback. The use of this tool, along with using strategies that encourage students to talk, providing equal opportunities for students to share their ideas, and valuing students voice will develop a culture where students feel comfortable being vulnerable sharing their work, be open to receiving peer comments, and value the feedback of their peers to deepen their understanding. Teachers can work on this starting on the first day of school by encouraging students to talk, allowing them to work in groups, to think-ink-pair-share, etc. Teachers can have classroom discussions that value multiple opinions and methods and demonstrate that mistakes are the soil for new learning to grow.
The Peer Feedback Tool is intended to be used by students as a reminder of how to give productive feedback when they are engaging in peer assessment, but this should not be the first time that students have discussed peer feedback. Students’ use of this tool will evolve over the school year. At the beginning of the school year, the Peer Feedback Tool can be used to introduce students to the characteristics of productive peer feedback. Using the tool, teachers can model how to give and receive constructive feedback. Eventually, as students have had practice in using the Peer Feedback Tool, the tool can be used as a reminder of how to give productive peer feedback and the type of feedback students should expect to receive from their classmates.
Before having students do peer assessments, have students get comfortable using sentence starters when communicating with each other “I agreed when you said ______, but disagreed about ______.” Once students get used to using these sentence starters in class discussion, they are ready to translate them to conducting peer assessments and providing peer feedback.
Learn more about setting up a culture with these resources:
Self Feedback
Externally provided feedback is imperative for developing students’ internal voice, training their thoughts as they work through tasks. Self feedback will further develop these metacognitive processes. “The skills of monitoring and assessing one’s own learning are essential to self-regulation, ...which is a hallmark of an effective learner.” (Heritage, 2010, pg 93) Through self assessment, students are led to monitor their learning and consider where they are in the journey toward the learning target defined by the teacher.
Self feedback develops a sense of responsibility for your own learning, and a responsibility to share that with your teacher. Self feedback asks students to assess where they are, where they need to be, and how they are going to get there with respect to the learning goal. Much like teacher and peer feedback, self feedback should be specific to the task and the learning goals for that task, as well as actionable and ongoing.
Evaluating their own understanding is not only useful to the student, but provides the teacher with enlightening data as well. Detailed information about students’ level of understanding, areas where they are confident and areas where they are struggling, helps teachers make decisions on how to spend subsequent instructional time.
Self feedback can be facilitated a number of ways. Strategies could be as simple as students indicating their understanding of a task with a thumb up, thumb sideways, or thumb down. While simple, this requires the student to do a quick inventory of what they know, and the teacher is able to quickly evaluate the level of understanding in the class. Or, students might complete a reflection such as the Self Feedback template. A strategy like this provides the students and teacher with a more detailed evaluation of what they are understanding, what they need help with, and possibly even how best to support them along the way.
Closing
In general, if we, as teachers, have no intention of providing feedback to students, we should strongly consider why we are assigning a task. Tasks can be assigned with the intention of peers providing feedback to each other, or with tools for students to address their own metacognition, but the process and goal should be clear to the student, as well as to others who may be helping the students reach their goals.
References
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Random House.
Hattie, J. (2017). Visible learning for mathematics, grades K-12: What works best to optimize student learning.
Heritage, M., & Stigler, J. W. (2010). Formative assessment: Making it happen in the classroom. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Corwin.
William, D (2006, July). Does assessment hinder learning? Paper presented at ETS Invitational Seminar, Institute of Civil Engineers, London
Included in this kit is a:
- One-page reference document that delineates productive and unproductive feedback characteristics
- A peer feedback tool and sentence starters
- A self feedback template
- And this user guide to help you implement formative assessment and feedback into your classroom as seamlessly as possible.
Productive and unproductive feedback characteristics
While a score of 63% on a math assignment may tell us something about a student’s understanding, it does not tell us much. In order for assessment to be productive, we have to provide formative assessment opportunities to students, but also provide them with feedback that will help them decide where they are, where they want to be, and how to get from one to the other. This one-page document is used to consider how your beliefs can impact the usefulness of the feedback you provide. Use this one-pager as a self-assessment of what you are currently doing, a discussion tool in professional learning, or as a way to identify areas of personal growth in providing feedback to students.
Peer Feedback
Peer feedback offers many advantages. It allows students a chance to get timely suggestions for improvement, usually within the same class period. Peer feedback is not only beneficial to the student receiving comments, but also the student providing the feedback. “People providing the feedback benefit just as much as the recipient, because they are forced to internalize the learning intentions and success criteria in the context of someone else’s work, which is less emotionally charged than one’s one” (William, 2006, p.6). When teachers collect peer feedback, they have an opportunity not only to see how well the reviewee understands the work, but also how well the reviewer understands the learning target and success criteria.
The Peer Feedback Tool helps build a positive classroom culture by identifying the expectations in giving constructive rather than critical feedback. The use of this tool, along with using strategies that encourage students to talk, providing equal opportunities for students to share their ideas, and valuing students voice will develop a culture where students feel comfortable being vulnerable sharing their work, be open to receiving peer comments, and value the feedback of their peers to deepen their understanding. Teachers can work on this starting on the first day of school by encouraging students to talk, allowing them to work in groups, to think-ink-pair-share, etc. Teachers can have classroom discussions that value multiple opinions and methods and demonstrate that mistakes are the soil for new learning to grow.
The Peer Feedback Tool is intended to be used by students as a reminder of how to give productive feedback when they are engaging in peer assessment, but this should not be the first time that students have discussed peer feedback. Students’ use of this tool will evolve over the school year. At the beginning of the school year, the Peer Feedback Tool can be used to introduce students to the characteristics of productive peer feedback. Using the tool, teachers can model how to give and receive constructive feedback. Eventually, as students have had practice in using the Peer Feedback Tool, the tool can be used as a reminder of how to give productive peer feedback and the type of feedback students should expect to receive from their classmates.
Before having students do peer assessments, have students get comfortable using sentence starters when communicating with each other “I agreed when you said ______, but disagreed about ______.” Once students get used to using these sentence starters in class discussion, they are ready to translate them to conducting peer assessments and providing peer feedback.
Learn more about setting up a culture with these resources:
- Video: My Favorite No https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srJWx7P6uLE
- Creating a Positive Classroom Climate with Krystal Clifton https://youtu.be/STcUVS7wY1Y and Slides http://bit.ly/CreatingPosClassEnv
- SEL Page of resources: http://www.ilclassroomsinaction.org/sel.html
- Collaborative Conversations Sentence Stems http://www.illinoisliteracyinaction.org/uploads/4/0/7/1/40712613/6_collaborative_conversation_sentence_stems_jb.pdf
- Collaborative Learning Guide http://www.ilclassroomsinaction.org/uploads/1/2/0/9/120982154/collaborative_learning_guidea__1_.pdf
Self Feedback
Externally provided feedback is imperative for developing students’ internal voice, training their thoughts as they work through tasks. Self feedback will further develop these metacognitive processes. “The skills of monitoring and assessing one’s own learning are essential to self-regulation, ...which is a hallmark of an effective learner.” (Heritage, 2010, pg 93) Through self assessment, students are led to monitor their learning and consider where they are in the journey toward the learning target defined by the teacher.
Self feedback develops a sense of responsibility for your own learning, and a responsibility to share that with your teacher. Self feedback asks students to assess where they are, where they need to be, and how they are going to get there with respect to the learning goal. Much like teacher and peer feedback, self feedback should be specific to the task and the learning goals for that task, as well as actionable and ongoing.
Evaluating their own understanding is not only useful to the student, but provides the teacher with enlightening data as well. Detailed information about students’ level of understanding, areas where they are confident and areas where they are struggling, helps teachers make decisions on how to spend subsequent instructional time.
Self feedback can be facilitated a number of ways. Strategies could be as simple as students indicating their understanding of a task with a thumb up, thumb sideways, or thumb down. While simple, this requires the student to do a quick inventory of what they know, and the teacher is able to quickly evaluate the level of understanding in the class. Or, students might complete a reflection such as the Self Feedback template. A strategy like this provides the students and teacher with a more detailed evaluation of what they are understanding, what they need help with, and possibly even how best to support them along the way.
Closing
In general, if we, as teachers, have no intention of providing feedback to students, we should strongly consider why we are assigning a task. Tasks can be assigned with the intention of peers providing feedback to each other, or with tools for students to address their own metacognition, but the process and goal should be clear to the student, as well as to others who may be helping the students reach their goals.
References
Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. New York: Random House.
Hattie, J. (2017). Visible learning for mathematics, grades K-12: What works best to optimize student learning.
Heritage, M., & Stigler, J. W. (2010). Formative assessment: Making it happen in the classroom. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Corwin.
William, D (2006, July). Does assessment hinder learning? Paper presented at ETS Invitational Seminar, Institute of Civil Engineers, London
