Tagged: formative assessment

What We Can Learn While We’re Grading

Grading never goes away. But what if we approach it as a form of personal PD? Teacher Lauren Brown traces how a history assignment evolved over four years as she paid close attention to what stymied her 8th graders and adapted her instruction to support their learning.

In the Heat of Learning, Good Questioning Is Key

During classroom discussion, paired Think Times provide a break in the action that helps teachers use student responses to shape effective feedback to learners, says expert Jackie Walsh – provided we “explicitly instruct our students in the what, why, and how of these time-outs.”

A Tool-Rich Guide to Formative Assessment

This guide is a great tool for any educator, school district, or higher education institution, writes Dr. Charice Hayes. The book involves the reader in defining effective ongoing assessment and includes tools to observe how other colleagues use formative assessment.

Literacy & Learning Centers for the Big Kids

When teachers think of learning centers, we often identify them with K-3 classrooms. Katherine McKnight shows how the model can be expanded and adapted for middle schoolers, incorporating the essentials of collaborative learning, content knowledge acquisition, and more.

8 Flexible Strategies for Formative Assessment

Barbara Blackburn strongly believes that if we are going to truly support students to higher levels, we must continually assess their learning and use that information to plan our future instruction. She offers eight formative assessment ideas that are easy to integrate.