Formative Assessment- MaryAnne

To distinguish between formative assessment and summative assessment.

Formative is to improve- identifies students' progress and next steps during the learning/unit. 

Summative is to prove- shows the students' achievement at the end of the unit. 

In reality, if your formative assessment is extensive, then summative assessment should not be necessary!

Formative Assessment Tools:
Traffic lights: student's identify on a 'traffic light' how they feel they have met a particular learning outcome. Green- great, Amber- not too bad, Red- too hard. These can be on little pieces of paper that students glue into their work whenever they have completed a task.
Thumbs up: similar to traffic lights but students show you how they feel about something with a thumbs up/down/to the side, used on the mat or in group discussion/teaching etc.
Learning buddies: students talk to a buddy about something they have learnt, what they found easy/difficult and something they would like to learn.

I will be starting to use traffic lights in my room by printing out little traffic lights on a piece of paper. Students will colour in the traffic light at the end of any task to indicate how they felt they did with it. Update on the success of this to come!