What my 490 and 491 practicums taught me about assessment is that both frontloading and formative assessment are the keys to student success. Without frontloading, students may not know what skills they need to be using for that particular lesson and the teacher may not know what the students still need to learn before jumping into a lesson. Without frontloading a lesson can go sideways quite quickly, especially if the students become frustrated with the content of the lesson because they do not have previous skills to work off of. For example, during my 490 practicum, I did a mathematics lesson on converting improper fractions to mixed numbers, if I had not taken the time to review what long division was before jumping into converting the fractions, there would have been major problems from a few of the students who really needed those reminders before starting a new concept. Without formative assessment, students would not be able to grow or develop their academic skills in a meaningful way. They would constantly be wondering what they were doing right or wrong. Formative assessment gives students the opportunity to grow before they get to a summative assessment. Formative assessment is essential for educators as well because it allows them to see where students are in their learning, how to help or challenge them, and where they need to focus their next lessons.
During both my 490 and 491 practicums I had the opportunity to help my coaching teachers write report cards. This was a great learning opportunity as my 490 practicum was in an intermediate class and my 491 practicum was in a primary class.
One of my go to formative assessments is “two stars and a wish”. For this I let students know two things I really liked about their work or two things they did well on and one thing to focus on or work on for the next time. This allows students to see what they are doing well on and what they can do to continue to grow as learners.
A few links to start with or refer to:
Transforming Assessment – BC’s New Curriculum
https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/node/88
BC’s K-12 Assessment System – BC’s New Curriculum
https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/assessment
Dylan Wiliam – YouTube – Assessment for Learning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiu-jY-xaPg
Dylan Wiliam – YouTube – Assessment Strategies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcJdZGz6ifY
Dylan Wiliam – YouTube – Formative Assessment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYdVe5O7KBE
Assessment: The Bridge Between Teaching and Learning – from Voices in the Middle, Volume 21, Number 2, December 2013
https://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/VM/0212-dec2013/VM0212Assessment.pdf