Formative Assessment

I am currently doing a lot of reading about formative assessment for an assignment I am writing. I have found this a really interesting topic. Formative assessmnet when done well can have a huge impact on student learning. One of my school's values is to promote life long learning. By using formative assessment we can really help children to become life long learners as they develop the ability to assess their own learning.

I thought that I was using fromative assessment because I use learning intentions and success criteria. But what I have discovered is that I am missing a vital step: Children assessing their own learning!

In the book Unlocking Formative Assessment by Shirley Clarke there is a good overview of what formative assessment should consist of. She talks about clarifying learning intentions and sharing these with children as well as helping them to self assess their learning against the learning intentions. What I have been doing is using learning intentions in my planning, telling children what they are, and displaying them on the classroom wall. I have in a way just been playing lip service to formative assessment rather than living it. In my classroom the learning intentions have not really been at the centre of everything that I do, and children have not really self evaluated their own learning. Any self assessment has been more about the content than the skills rather than the learning itself. My next learning step is to ensure that I plan activities really carefully to ensure that children are working towards the intended learning intention and developing the ability to assess their current ability and next steps.

In my experience this is not unusual. There are many teachers who 'do' formative assessment in this way. I believe we could benefit from professional development in formative assessment.