Formative Assessment at Shadybrook Elementary

Formative assessment is a huge part of my school's daily schedule.  It is mandatory for teachers to do and document all assessments.  I have seen my teacher use many types of formative assessments.  Some have included matrixes, tickets out the door, thumbs up, and many more.  An example of formative assessment being used is when my teacher told all the students who understood a topic to put their thumb up, the ones that were a little fuzzy to put their thumbs sideways, and the ones who were completely lost to put their thumbs down.  Luckily, there were no thumbs down.  There were about 5 thumbs sideways.  She said that everyone can work independently and she went over to the students with thumbs sideways to help them understand by wording it a different way and giving each of them individualized attention.  That is how she remediated their learning.  At the end of the lesson, all of the students handed in a writing piece as a ticket out the door so the teacher could see if all of the students finally understood the concept.
Formative assessment is very important at Shadybrook.  This is because their is a new principal that is working hard to make sure all students get the education they deserve.  He does not want any of them to fall behind so formative assessment is a way that he can check to see how each individual student is doing.

Learning Gaps

Learning gaps are determined by the difference in what the student knows and where they are in their learning and where they should be based on the state objectives and standards.  Learning gaps occur when students are below grade level and struggling to comprehend their grade's concepts.  To address learning gaps, teachers must anticipate where students might struggle and fall behind.  I do this by creating a formative assessment plan.  This way, I will be able to prepare for them and eliminate any foreseen problems while making the lesson plan.  I will make sure all the predicted problems with the lesson will not happen so my students will have ample opportunity to learn.  During the lesson, I must document evidence of learning.  There are many different assessments I use.  Matrixes, rubrics, ticket out the door, muddiest points, and one thing I learned are all ways to creatively assess your students.  This formative assessment is done many times throughout the unit and lessons.  Teachers must analyze the documented learning evidence to see exactly where the problems are and what students need help with.  With this learned information from the formative assessment, teachers must remediate their instruction to cater to the students needs and provide feedback for them so they can succeed.

Formative Assessment Concerns

Formative Assessment is a great tool to use throughout the school day.  There are a lot of positive aspects of the assessing tool but there are some things that concern me.  I am worried about what to do with the students I know who understand the concept by doing my formative assessment and helping the other students who are struggling.  Through formative assessment, I will know which students understand and which ones need extra time and help.  I will have to help the confused students.  I am worried that the students who are quicker to understand concepts will not get to achieve their full potential because they are not given the proper opportunities to succeed.  This is due to the concentration being on the lower achieving students.  They still need to improve themselves even though they are on grade level, they are not achieving the most they can and that is unacceptable.  I also  do not know when a good time is to move on to the next subject if not all students have grasped the concept.  There are so many objectives needing to be met in a year and if we wait for every student to understand the concept concretely then not all objectives will be explored.
I will definitely need to come up with a plan to facilitate the learning of higher order thinking and inventive thinking for the students who are quicker to understand.  I will do this by giving those students opportunities to dig down deeper into the concept by taking other steps of analysis, application, and creation while the other students are working on remembering and understanding.  This way both sets of students get authentic learning experiences.  To make sure all objectives are met, there comes a point where the class must move on.  The students who do not understand will get the concepts intertwined in other subjects and objectives throughout the year.  This way they all get all the objectives hit and have a concreate understanding of them.
Formative assessment will help me determine which students need the extra help and which ones need deeper thinking work.