Musings of a Not-So-Stay-at-Home Mom: Quick thoughts on formative assessments

In a guest lecture I watched for one of my MLIS classes this week, Susan Grigsby reminds us that good assessment informs our instruction, can be integrated into school improvement plans, and aids us in advocacy. In the realm of formative assessments, I appreciate the NCTE’s (2013) reminder that “formative assessment is the lived, daily embodiment of a teacher’s desire to refine practice based on a keener understanding of current levels of student performance, undergirded by the teacher’s knowledge of possible paths of student development within the discipline and of pedagogies that support such develop” (p. 2). That “lived, daily” portion really struck me!

Thankfully, I have learned many great tools over the past couple of years! Here are a few of my favorites:

Word cloud – I just love a good word cloud because it is both an image and text. I’ve used AnswerGarden and Mentimeter to create word clouds. My favorite way to use it at the beginning of instruction, just to get a sense of what students think about a topic and what they may already know (triggering that prior knowledge), and then again at the end of instruction to see how ideas may have changed. For example, I realized when I beta tested the News Literacy Project’s Checkology program on the First Amendment that a word cloud is a great way to gauge what students think about the First Amendment before we do the unit and then see their evolution in thinking after the unit. Some words get larger, some get smaller, some appear, and some vanish!
Thumbs Up/Down – How about a super simple tool? During virtual learning, having students indicate a thumbs up for “I get it,” a thumbs down for “I don’t get it,” or a horizontal thumb for “eh, I’m getting there” has been a great way to do a quick check-in and determine whether to move on or try another instructional tactic!
Kahoot! And Quizzizz – Students rarely complain about formative assessments that feel like a game, and I can always tell when my own 5^th grader is doing a Kahoot! with his class because I hear the engagement from the back room. Try gamifying your assessments!