Essay On Formative Assessment

Assessments

Formative assessment. The goal of formative assessment is to monitor student learning to provide ongoing feedback that can be used by instructors to improve their teaching and by students to improve their learning. To be more specifically, formative assessments help learners’ identify their strengths and weaknesses and specific areas that need improvement. Unlike summative assessment, formative assessments assist educators’ to recognize and immediately address student’s challenges. Formative assessments’ are regarded as low stakes, which means that they have little or no value (Frey, N., & Fisher, D. 2011; Yu, H., & Li, H. 2014).

Summative assessment. The goal of summative assessment is to appraise student learning at the end of

Performance assessment is based on observation and judgment. There are two parts to this assessment, the task a student must complete and the criteria in which to gauge one’s assessment. Performance assessments can take on several forms. Performance assessment can be broken down into more specific elements referred to as product and skills targets. Example of product would be a term paper and skills would be fluently reading aloud (Mislevy, R. J., & Knowles, K. T. 2002).

Assessment methods

There are two basic types of assessment methods, direct and indirect.

Direct method. Direct method is based on a sample of the student’s work, including reports, exams, demonstrations, performances, and completed works, requires students to produce work so that reviewers can assess how well students meet expectations, in doing so, the reviewer captures examples of what learners’ can do, which can be strong evidence of student learning. (Maki, P.L. 2004).

Indirect method. Indirect method is based upon a report of perceived student learning while providing opportunities for learners’ to reflect on their learning, and inform the reviewers the student’s perceptions of their learning experience. Because each is imitated, an ideal assessment program would combine direct and indirect measures from a variety of sources. (Palomba & Banta, 1999; Maki, P.L.

The educational system defines stake holder as anyone who has a stake in the welfare of their child or students’. This is a top down system starting with administration, board members’, city council, educators’, and parents’ and most important, the students’. To put it another way, stake holder are most affected if assessments do not address the needs of the students. According to Stan Paine, et al.(2009) the staff need to provide necessary information to those who oversee students success. Course material must align with student achievement goals. Genuine collaboration and meaningful roles for educators and transparency must be shared by everyone involved (Paine, S., McCann, R.