A How-To Guide from Edmentum International

Assessment for Learning

Your Formative Assessment Partner

School managers, principals, and teachers are responsible for making instructional
decisions based on multiple forms of student evaluation, but how do you ensure
that students are making progress in their learning towards end-of-year goals and
objectives? This workbook will help you distinguish between various assessment
types, build goals, identify best practices around your assessments, and analyze your
data in an effort to make lasting instructional decisions over the school year.

Distinguishing Between Different Types of Assessments................... 2

Assessment Goals and Best Practices.................................................. 3
Questions to Ask Yourself...................................................................... 4
Informing Instruction Through Data..................................................... 5
Formative Assessment Strategies in Practice...................................... 6
Reflection Exercise................................................................................. 8
Make Your Data Actionable................................................................... 9
Organizing Your Data to Identify Gaps............................................... 10
Tracking Your Data................................................................................ 11

1
Distinguishing Between Different Types of Assessments

To better understand where and how formative assessments fit into an assessment system,
it is important to be able to differentiate between the different types of assessments.

Formative, Short-Term Assessments

Formative assessments provide crucial information about student learning.
They are a fluid measure of student progress that help you determine if and
when you need to provide timely support or interventions to your students.
Assessments provide quick and immediate data so that teachers can adjust
instruction and provide timely feedback.

Also called: real-time assessments; diagnostic testlets; quick, informal

assessments; and continuous assessments.

Interim, Medium-Term Assessments

Interim assessments guide learning based on performance relative to a set of
very specific academic goals. Interim assessments help assess mastery over a
longer period of time. These assessments can, however, be used in a formative
manner if the data is used over time to guide instruction and learning.

Also called: benchmark assessments, diagnostic assessments, unit or quarter

assessments, and interval assessments.

Summative, Long-Term Assessments

Summative, or long-term, assessments help you determine content mastery
over an even longer period of time. Typically referred to as an assessment of
learning, and unlike the other two assessment types, summative assessments
are often referred to as “high-stakes” due to the large amount of content
covered.

Also called: end-of-semester/end-of-year assessments, and

high-stakes assessments.

2
 Assessment Goals and Best Practices

Your goal is to create a culture of formative assessment in your classroom. To do

this, you will gather data, analyze it, and decide in the moment whether or not
to change your instruction. Often, short-term, formative assessments are more
informal in nature. For medium- and long-term assessments, however, evidence
of student achievement will be collected relative to a longer period of instruction.
Ultimately, you must identify what to improve upon for future lessons, or what you
should come back to or reteach based on results.

Short-Term Medium- and Long-Term

Assessments Assessments

Timing In the moment, during a session. 3-4 times per year, immediately following a
larger instructional unit.

Examples • Thumbs-up/thumbs-down activity • Unit tests

• Hand thermometers • Running records/learning journals
• Individual whiteboard activity • Projects - in pairs or individual
• Traffic lights • Common assessments
• Benchmark assessments

Best 1. Reteach the skills in real time using 1. Adjust your longer-term instruction
new methods. based on interim assessment results.
Practices
2. Use your data to create small groups. 2. Identify which content you can spiral
Then, reteach or reinforce the review in your daily lessons.
corresponding lessons or skills during 3. Backfill larger content gaps using a
group time. multidisciplinary approach to instruction.
3. Assign select students additional practice 4. Give students ownership over their
(both online and print-based) to help fill learning by getting them to mark their own
knowledge gaps. work or peer assess the work of others in
4. Create small groups that can focus on the class.
specific skills or lessons.

Warnings Formative assessment is not just about numbers. Often, formative assessment data is based on
informal data like observations and conversations.

TIP
Formative assessments are not always formal, pen-and-paper assessments.
Don’t be afraid to try new informal tactics like those listed above.

3
 Questions to Ask Yourself

You have so much data, where do you start analyzing without feeling overwhelmed?
To have the greatest impact on your class instruction, you should have a good idea of
what types of information you want to learn from your students and what are the best
questions to ask in order to get the right response.

The following checklist will help you get started:

What are my students’ individual learning goals?

What do my students know/want to know about a
specific topic?
Which groups of students have a good handle on a
specific concept, and which do I need to pull together
and provide extra support to?
What misconceptions do my students have about a
specific concept before we get started?
Are my students understanding this lesson, or do I
need to adjust my teaching approach?
How effective was my instruction today and over the
unit as a whole?
What challenges do I need to address before my
student or group of students are able to continue making
progress?
Are my students still on track and making progress
relative to a specific set of goals? Are there any
patterns?

EducationCity's assessments can help keep you on

TIP track! Explore the assessments we offer per subject
and experiment with them. You don't have to use the
full assessment, but could instead pull out a specific
question of interest for a lesson starter or plenary.

4
Informing Instruction Through Data

Now that we have gone over the different types of assessments and how those
assessments will provide the data you need to meet your goals, you can begin to
reflect on the type of activities that will fit with your teaching style and engage your
learners.

Formative assessment Capture data to

has a specific goal: inform instruction.

Five Tips for Success

According to research, effective assessment activities must have:

1. Learning progressions: Your students’ learning progress should align to the ultimate goal of your lessons.

2. Goals and criteria for success: Communicate clearly defined goals for success with your students.

3. Descriptive feedback: Provide evidence-based feedback linked to instructional outcomes for success.

4. Peer and self-assessment: Engage students in feedback and review by asking them for higher-order thinking
and reflection of their own learning.

5. Collaboration: Create a culture of partnership for learning between teachers and students, so you're working
together towards the ultimate goal.

5
Formative Assessment Strategies in Practice

Knowing what you can do to adjust instruction following a formative assessment

is different from being confident that you leveraged tools, activities, and your own
expertise in the most effective manner. Many of the schools we work with use a
variety of formative assessment tools to guide their teaching and learning. Take a
look at some of them below:

Thumbs Up and Down

A teacher is not sure the class is understanding the lesson on the difference
between fiction and non-fiction stories. The teacher asks students to hold
their hands under their chins and give a “thumbs up” if the story could be
identified as a non-fiction story or give a “thumbs down” if the story is a
fiction tale. The teacher does a quick tally of the group and notices there
is a pretty even split. The teacher decides to open the classroom to a
discussion with the students presenting arguments for both sides.

TIP This teacher is using a formative assessment approach to collect evidence of learning and adjust
instruction. This teacher integrates techniques like an informal tally, hand raising, and a thumbs up or
down to quickly gauge students' understanding.

Classroom Quizzes
A teacher administers a weekly quiz addressing all of the material covered
for the week. The quizzes are supposed to motivate students to study for
the summative unit as well as provide them with a sample of the question
types they may encounter on the unit test. Following the quiz, the teacher
moves on to the next lesson as planned.

This is not an example of formative assessment because the teacher does not use the evidence from
TIP the quizzes to adjust instruction, or provide direction to students for them to think about their own
learning. The only information the students receive is a score for the number of correct answers.

6
Formative Assessment Strategies in Practice

Structured Pair Work

Following a whole-class lesson, students split into pairs to discuss specific
questions. They analyze each other’s responses and come to a consensus between
themselves. As the students work with their partners, the teacher walks around
and notes common misunderstandings and gaps in understanding. At the end,
the teacher uses the information to help redirect thinking and reinforce ideas.

This is an example of formative assessment where the questions asked and the peer conversations
had are used to elicit evidence of the students’ understanding. The students are able to self-reflect
TIP and get feedback from their peers. The teacher is able to listen to the conversations between
students to note the current level of understanding of the class and for individual students. The
teacher uses the information immediately to assist students in their learning by redirecting thinking,
reinforcing ideas, or providing cues.

Hands Up
A teacher has just completed a unit on fractions and wants to assess whether
students have an understanding of the content. The teacher asks a prepared
question and sees how many students raise their hands and volunteer an
answer. After calling on one of the volunteers, who gets the answer correct,
the teacher is confident the class understands the lesson and is ready to
move on.

While an informal poll, like a hand raise, can give you some information, it might not give you the
full picture. The students who volunteer are typically the students who understand the content
TIP clearly; the ones who need help may or may not ever ask for help. The limited data received from
this exercise makes it difficult to determine how to adjust lesson planning to meet the needs of
individual students. Therefore, this is not a strong example of formative assessment.

7
Reflection Exercise

A Look at Your Progress

Based on what you have read so far, why not take some time to identify what
you’d like to start, stop, and continue doing to improve data collection and
inform your lesson planning?

START STOP CONTINUE

What formative assessment activities have you implemented in the past? Think about the focused questions you were
trying to answer. Did you use the data to adjust instruction, and did you share that data with your students? Did your
assessment meet the attributes of an effective formative assessment?

8
Make Your Data Actionable

Once the assessments have been given and the data has been analyzed, you are
faced with the challenge of making use of the data in front of you. Many studies
have attempted to tap into the reasoning behind this difficult phase in the formative
assessment cycle. Often, more than half of teachers report feeling overwhelmed
by the amount of data coming in and still remain unsure of how to effectively
adapt their instructional practices in their classroom to better reflect what the data
suggests. Putting a protocol into place for data analysis can really help maximize the
process of implementing data-driven instruction in the classroom.

When applied to the classroom, many factors can be responsible for skill gaps. These include any dynamics from
challenging content or ineffective teaching methods and the learning processes and learning environments utilized
that could influence student achievement and learning. To accurately determine what the problem is, integrate an
inquiry-based, problem-solving approach using what you have learned so far in this workbook.

Questions to Ask
Do your assessments align to your overarching What types of interventions can you implement using
instructional goals and how have your goals the student data that you have collected?
been communicated?

YES

NO

What types of data have you collected?

Are they all actionable?

YES

NO
How are you using your data to support learning
What standards need improvement and why? challenges continuously over time?

9
 Organizing Your Data to Identify Gaps

To uncover the root cause of achievement gaps, you'll need to collect actionable
data, which is shown by the inquiry-approach model. First, you need to be able
to organize the data you have; then, you can begin the more important stage of
interpretation.

Try turning your data into separate tables and charts.

Incorporate color-coding. Highlight areas of need, groups of students, standards or learning objectives, and
mastery all in different color combinations to allow for quick insights.

Layer different forms of data. Break down data into separate tables for learning objectives, student groupings,
and missed items so that it’s much easier to focus on key data sets without getting too overwhelmed.

Consider using digital tools to make data analysis instantaneous. Many digital tools provide technology that
can do the sorting and analysis for you, saving you time and energy better spent on planning and instruction.
Look for data dashboards that quickly break down data in real time and provide useful color-coded, graphic
depictions of data.

TIP Effective interpretation of data begins with analyzing student data for commonly missed items,
common mistakes, and patterns in both student groups and individual student work.

Root cause analysis is a great tool to use for this. Here's an example of what it might look like in the real world:

Problem: Possible cause:

You just baked a new batch of 1. The oven temperature was incorrect. (Test: Adjust your
cookies, and they did not turn oven temperature.)
out well. 2. You missed out an ingredient. (Test: Adjust your
ingredients one by one until you find the culprit.)

Problem:
Possible Causes Tests
1.
2.
3.

EducationCity can really help here. Firstly, because its new Assessment Report is a great tool to
TIP help you group students that are struggling with a particular concept. Secondly, as many of its
assessments generate personalized Revision Journals by analyzing the questions the students
have answered incorrectly. These collections of Activities and Learn Screens address the problem
learning objectives - perfect for independent remediation or revision at home!

10
 Tracking Your Data

Data analysis is both a powerful driver and crucial element of formative assessment
practices in the classroom. The appropriate collection of and use of data can help
make a lasting impact on student achievement over the course of a school year. This
worksheet will help you collect and organize your data in an effort to build out a
meaningful action plan for your students.

Assessment Name: Administration Date:

Assessment Tool: Subject Area/Grade Level:

Reporting Category Area of Focus Reporting Category Areas of Strength

Standards Proficiency:
Standards Needing Improvement - High Priority Correct/Total Correct %

Standards Needing Improvement - High Priority Correct/Total Correct %

Standards Needing Improvement - High Priority Correct/Total Correct %

Standards Needing Improvement - High Priority Correct/Total Correct %

11
 Tracking Your Data

Student Performance:
Below Approaching Meeting Exceeding
Percentage Percentage Percentage Percentage

Student Names Student Names Student Names Student Names

Action Plan:

12
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