Friday, September 18, 2015
Blog #4 Formative vs. Summative Assessment
Discuss the differences between Formative and Summative assessment (do a little research if you need to)? If you had to break it down into more workable terms, how would you define the two? Why are both important? Discuss what you learned, how you feel this idea affects students of varying needs/learning styles/disabilities, and the pitfalls of doing too much or too little of one or both. Discuss how it has felt to evaluate one another! Blog by Thursday, 9/24 and respond by class time Monday, 9/28.
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A formative assessment allows teachers to look at or gain information about their students knowledge about a subject to help them plan or prepare for the next steps in their instruction plan. A summative assessment allows teachers to gather information about how well their students attain knowledge from the previous instructions. Formative assessments are like projects or ways students can respond to show their understanding of the lesson or unit. Summative assessments are more like final exams and papers that can be given a grade. Both are important because a summative assessment can quickly show the teacher where each student is in there learning. A formative assessments can be used in the middle of a lesson more so than at the end. Many students have test anxiety, like myself, and when it comes to a final exam or a big paper at the end of the semester it feels like the whole world is about to come to an end because I get stressed very easily. So for students who do have test anxiety a formative assessment may be ideal because if they do a project they are sharing their knowledge and feel less like they are being tested. When I was evaluating my classmates, I hope I graded/evaluated them fairly, like I hope I didn't "nit pick" them to death. It was a good but stressful experience.
ReplyDeleteI agree on how the formative and summative tests can be used in a classroom and that the way a teacher uses them is also important. I too hope that i did a decent job on grading everyone's assignment for chapter three.
DeleteI definitely agree with the "nit picking" because I feel the same way when I grade someone else's work. I feel like I am being too harsh all the time, or sometimes I might be going too easy on them.
DeleteA formative assessment is a way of monitoring a student's understanding based on their response. For instance, if a teacher asks a question in class then assess who answers the question and who does so correctly. A summative assessment is the teacher assessing what the students have learned from their teaching. So an example, of that would be a test at the end of a chapter. Personally, I hate summative assessments just because I am a horrible test taker. Even though I do not like taking summative assessments, I still think they are just as important as formative assessments in every classroom. In my future classroom, I will try to approach summative assessments with a positive outlook so that my students will not dread them like I have growing up.
ReplyDeleteI think having a positive outlook on summative assessments is important especially when you have students that get nervous about taking tests. calling them something different or having a good review session could make students less stressed.
DeleteA formative assessment is something that will help the teacher understand how much the students know about a topic. If the teacher asks questions during class and having a discussion or has groups work together to do something like jigsaw teaching then the teacher can understand what her students need to learn more about and what they know well. A formative assessment can help teachers to plan their instruction. If a teacher does not use formative assessment then they will be unable to plan their instruction according to what their students need to learn. If a teacher uses formative assessment too much then they will never be able to understand what their students have taken away from a unit and give them a grade based on what the student has learned, which is why teachers need to use summative assessments as well. A summative assessment is given to students at the end of a unit and is used more for grading purposes. Summative assessments can be tests or projects that will tell the teacher how much the students have learned. However, only using summative assessment may not always show how much a student has learned if they are bad test takers, for example. Being able to use both is important to teachers that want to truly know how much their students understand the material.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you say and to add on you make summative assessments a reflective process by letting the students fix their mistakes and earn either extra credit for it or some of the points back.
DeleteWhen i looked up the definition of formative assessment the website described it as a way for teachers to monitor student learning and providing ongoing feedback that can be used to improve student learning. The also can help students know what their strengths and weaknesses are so that they can can work on those areas. On the other hand, a summative assessment is where teachers evaluate student learning at the end of a lesson or specific unit. If i had to describe the two in my own words i would say that a formative assessment is where the teacher will let you fix or correct the mistakes a student may have made on an assignment and a summative assessment is when a student cannot make corrections and the grade they make is final. I think both are important because it shows the teacher what each students knows and what they can improve on. Also, what the teachers may need to reteach or elaborate on. I think the idea about summative and formative assessments affects students of varying needs and learning styles or abilities by giving them a chance to work on a part of a lesson that they may not have understood, and then with a summative assessment it shows how much or how little they know about a subject or topic. When it came to evaluating one another's work on chapter three, it felt weird because i did not want to grade then too harshly but then drawing the line between grading them too easily and by how well they did the assignment was also difficult.
ReplyDeleteI said the same thing about grading them too harshly, it always feels mean. But I think most of the time we are grading to the best of our ability, and the person being graded needs to think of it as constructive criticism and that we are only trying to help!
DeleteI think that the big difference is the help that each provide. A formative assessment tells a teacher what the student knows without pressuring the students. They are things like pre-tests, they are designed to help the teacher gather their students knowledge of the subject. A summative assessment lets the teacher know what knowledge the student knows after they have taught them the lesson. These are commonly tests but can be other things. If I had to break the two down I would say formative is meant to show the teacher what to teach, and summative assessment shows a teacher what the student has learned. They are both beneficial because they are types of feedback. Too much formative and the students will have very little actual grades but to much formative and you might teach the wrong things. Evaluating each other was a bit strange because I was evaluating someone around my age and I didn't want to make them look bad.
ReplyDeleteFormative assessment lets teachers assess what their students know about a subject before teaching it, in order to decide what things need to be hit on the most. It also does not count for a grade which is good for the students. Summative assessments let teachers see how well their students are learning from what they have taught them. In more understandable terms, formative is before the lesson and no grade, summative is after the lesson and with a grade. Both are important because they allow teachers to understand their students in the best ways possible, and to know what and how they should be teaching. This idea can affect students of various learning abilities because some students may not test well, so they could actually know more about the subject that what the summative test says they do. Too much summative testing could have a negative outcome for the students because they don't get a chance to show what they really know if they just happen to not be good at test taking. Too little formative testing could have a negative outcome for the teacher because they won't know what the students may already know, and could be teaching things that don't need to be hit on as much as something else. Personally, I feel slightly uncomfortable evaluating one another because I don't want the person to feel that is is personal or make them feel bad about themselves. If I could, I would give everyone 100% for trying.
ReplyDeleteI also think that both assessments are very important for the classroom. They both allow the teacher to teach to the best of their ability and help the students benefit from learning. If some of my teachers would use more formative assessments I feel that they could see that most of the class already knows what the teacher is teaching and the class could move on to stuff that needs to be learned.
DeleteI agree with you that both types of assessment are useful in a classroom because how else are we as future teachers going to be able to understand and meet the needs of our students. I also think it is somewhat challenging to balance between the right amount of formative and summative assessments. I think it is a good idea to give everyone passing grades on this assignment too.
DeleteI think that the big difference is the help that each provide. A formative assessment tells a teacher what the student knows without pressuring the students. They are things like pre-tests, they are designed to help the teacher gather their students knowledge of the subject. A summative assessment lets the teacher know what knowledge the student knows after they have taught them the lesson. These are commonly tests but can be other things. If I had to break the two down I would say formative is meant to show the teacher what to teach, and summative assessment shows a teacher what the student has learned. They are both beneficial because they are types of feedback. Too much formative and the students will have very little actual grades but to much formative and you might teach the wrong things. Evaluating each other was a bit strange because I was evaluating someone around my age and I didn't want to make them look bad.
ReplyDelete