In our staff meeting this week (week 1 term 3) we will be revisiting our formative assessment action plans from early term 2. What formative assessment strategies did we say we were trying to accomplish in our classrooms and have we had any success? If you don’t have your personal action plan at hand then you can access it by clicking here. This will take you to the post Teacher Personal Action Plans: Formative Assessment where we shared our plans with each other. I will print a copy of all those shared on the blog and bring them to the staff meeting. Those that did not put their plans on the blog will need to bring them to the meeting.

The main focus of the meeting will be to reflect on where we are at and how we will continue to move forward using formative assessment. Some time will be given to plan in more detail what it is you would like to achieve and determine timelines around implementation and reflection. Our focus on formative assessment is about improving our ability to move student learning forward.

Have you made a genuine attempt to improve your use of formative assessment or is it on the back burner (if it is why is it?)? If what you have tried or try in the future does not work for you the need to persist, adapt and modify is important. The quote from Dylam Wiliam below reinforces why formative assessment is important.

‘Formative assessment describes all those processes by which teachers and learners use information about student’s achievement to improve their achievements. So it’s about using information to adapt your teaching, to adapt the work of your pupils to put the learning back on track … to make sure the learning is proceeding in the right direction and to support that learning. So it’s what happens when you don’t just lecture students and rattle through the material and then ask them if they understood OK.’  Dylan Wiliam, Nov 2006

Below is a graphic that has some of those formative strategies on it. There is also some video, text and images embedded into the poster to help explain some concepts.

Unfortunately the video embedded could only be up to 30 seconds long as the app I used (ThingLink) was a free version, the paid version is a $250 subscription for a year designed for businesses. Due to this concepts are not explained in any detail, however revisit Dylan Wiliam’s book Embedding Formative Assessment for full explanation of all strategies.