Peter Afferbach talks extensively about formative and summative assessments in his excellent podcast on the International Reading Association site. Log in to http://www.reading.org with your user name and password. You will find the podcast under Web Resources. Listen to the podcast and then talk about the formative reading assessments you use or would use in your classroom.
You will also be required to respond to at least one other blog entry by a student in the cohort.
Touro Literacy 
July 7, 2008 at 8:39 pm |
I would like to use the running record formative assessment. I feel that it is a great way to see the children’s progress and pinpoint the area’s that need to worked on with each individual child. I will do running records during my small reading group / center time. During this time I would also use graphic organizers and sequencing chards to help the students make predictions and sequence events. Collecting these work samples is another way I could assess the students.
July 7, 2008 at 8:41 pm |
As an AIS teacher, the formative assessment is the brenchmark, which is given to students 2x’s a year. My students become very nervous and tense when benchmarking takes place. They sincerely want to do a good job reading because they feel they are being tested.
However, a less stressful assessment for students is in the form of a summative, which is very acurate during guided reading groups.
July 7, 2008 at 8:41 pm |
Formative assessments that I have used in my classroom have ranged greatly. I have used journal entries, quizzes, benchmarks, and I have also been exposed to running records. From my experience, when dealing with intermediate grades, I find the best formative assessment that I use to be journal entries. Here my students can express themselves and write freely. I can also observe the advantages and disadvantages of their writing. From my experience most of my students have reoccurring errors. With this, the student can have repeated correction to remind themselves of their mistakes, and eventually make the corrections. I would eventually like to gain more exposure to running records since I know I will be dealing with them more greatly in the future. I’ve had limited experience with these, and I would love to gain more knowledge in this area. I think all formative assessments are essential for all teachers. These small ongoing assessments will help teachers guide their instruction and adapt lessons to the needs of students.
July 7, 2008 at 8:42 pm |
In a future classroom I would use Dibels to assess my students. I would also use teacher observation and running records. Dibels will let me know where my students are with reading when they enter my classroom as well as throughout the school year. This is a good way to monitor their progress. By knowing this I will be able to better tailor my reading instruction and get the extra help from a reading specialist needed for this child or be able to provide the help on my own. I may even be able to pull an entire group of students that may be struggling with the same aspect of reading. Through teacher observation I would be able to see if the student is struggling on a particular aspect of reading. A running record would allow me to keep specific notes on each student in my classroom for reference of their progress. I think these three formative reading assessments would be great for a future classroom.
July 7, 2008 at 8:42 pm |
I taught in a Kindergarten classroom. A lot of the assessments I did came in the form of teacher observations. These observations occured in both small group and whole group. When doing class read-alouds, there were lots of question and answer activities that allowed me to observe what my students knew. I also kept a portfolio of their work. Several times throughout the year I would take samples of their writing to include in the portfolio. This really allowed me to see growth throughout the year. In Kindergarten we also use DIBELS to assess skills such as letter naming fluency, phoneme segmentation fluency, nonsense word fluency, and initial sound fluency. Throughout the course of the year, these assessments are given to see how students are progressing in the different areas. I was able to see which students were on target, which students were progressiong nicely toward the end of the year goal, and which students were really struggling. By using the DIBELS assessments, I was able to provide specific instruction to my students in the areas that they needed.
July 7, 2008 at 8:42 pm |
I have used formative reading assessments in a variety of ways. One way I used it is by teacher observation. I would walk around the room spending time at each group to make observations about students. These observations allowed me to make instructional decisions based on what they students are in need of. Response journals were another way I used formative assessment. Students responded to questions and simply wrote journal articles. Students also responded to a writing prompts in those journals. DIBBELS testing was another formative assessment I used. I progress monitored about every two weeks on student who did not reach the benchmark. This gave me an assessment of my students’ oral reading fluency.
July 7, 2008 at 8:43 pm |
I was never a student who excelled on formative assessments. I firmly believe that state wide tests are a good way to pigeonhole students and that’s it! In my classroom I prefer to have many varieties of assessments. I love making rubrics that are fun for the students to use and easy understand. Checklists are also a very straight forward for students. Even informal observations are an idea at times. Tell students that as long as they try they will receive an A. There must be intrinsic motivation for students. I do have test that students must study for from time to time. These are for math and spelling primarily. The difference here between state tests and these formative assessments I create is that I know my students skills and levels. I know what spectrum they are on. How students do on the test is now officially a reflection of their motivation and my teaching. We are also given more time to have fun and not stress. Assessments, and the pressure they contain for everyone, very easily make school an unpleasant atmosphere to be in.
July 7, 2008 at 8:44 pm |
I think that formative assessments are a very important part of every day in the classroom. It helps to show the teacher where each student is excelling as well as struggling. Instruction can be adapted based on formative assessments and their results.
-In my classroom, I administer benchmarking twice a year to make sure I am teaching my students at their instructional reading level.
-I also take good notes when I am conferencing with students or observing them reading to me or two another student. I use these notes as observations, and also as a tool to record anything I taught the student that day, and what I want to check on next time. I made up a spreadsheet with each students’ name on it, the days of the week, and a comment box. I use one sheet for Reading Workshop each week and one for Writing Workshop each week. I make sure that by Friday, I have visited with each student one-on-one in both workshops and conferred with them.
-In Reading Workshop specifically, I have students write letters in their Response Journals about a book they read each week. They are not allowed to write sumamries, they must write about their thoughts and different reading strategies that we have gone over in class. I write back to each and every student and probe for higher level thinking from the student. If they can write about their reading, then they are understanding it. I make note of which strategies in parts of stories each student discusses and use it to write my response to them to get more out of them, as well as to guide my mini-lessons for the following weeks.
-Weekly spelling tests with different words for each student, specific to their needs.
July 7, 2008 at 8:44 pm |
I use formative reading assessments such as Fontas and Pinnell benchmarking test in November and in June. (I believe this can be a summative assessment also). In Sept. I use the Schlagel Spelling Inventory and the Slosson Word Recognition Test. Also, I use observational notes when the students are doing their independent reading. At that time, I make notes on their fluency. I also ask for personal responses and higher level thinking questions. In their Reading Response Letters the students write about the story they have read. They summarize and reflect weekly. On Mondays I introduce the Word Study spelling list which highlights a special spelling word pattern. On Friday is their weekly spelling test Weekly, the children have a short story to read at home (in addition to their guided reading) and they have a comprehension test on Friday. In January, the fourth grade have the NYS ELA assessment ( which is considered summative) which determines if they will have AIS support the following year.
July 7, 2008 at 8:45 pm |
Some of the formative assessments I use in my classroom are Fountas and Pinell benchmarking assessments, observational notes in guided reading groups, writtten tests and quizzes, weekly reading response journals, and oral assessments. I think that formative assessments are important because they are ongoing assessments that record a student’s growth over a period of time as opposed to summative assessments like state exams that are a “snapshot” of a child’s performance on a given day. Also, students are more relaxed during formative assessments and in many cases don’t know they are even being assessed as opposed to the anxiety and stress that accompanies the summative assessments and could effect their performance.
July 7, 2008 at 8:46 pm |
In my classroom, I use many different types of formative assessments. I use classroom observations, teacher made work sheets, and running records. I use classroom observations on a daily basis. This allows me to be aware of what my students are learning, understanding and applying. I also use teacher made worksheets and test. These allow me to know what students are understanding. If students are not understanding what the lesson is, the worksheets will usually be an indicator, then I will reteach the lesson in a different way. I also use running records. An example of this is with sight words. I have different lists for different levels. I will have the students read the words starting at the beginnig. They read until they get 4 or more wrong. When they get that amount of words wrong, then I teaching them with that list of words. When I know the students have the words concretely, I will retest them on the words. I continue this until all the words on all the lists are known concretely.
July 7, 2008 at 8:47 pm |
With limited experience with teaching reading I have to refer to what I did during my student teaching. MY placement was in a 6th grade classroom and we read “Number the Stars” together as a class. Before reading each chapter we reviewed what had happed so far, I called on students to summerize events, having other fill in details. “Number the Stars” is a particularly good book to use for class discussion, it has many details that are representative of the character’s feelings about the events of the time.
We had daily “grand conversations” about details and interpretations of events in the book. The events of this books spurred some very good discussion and I was able to get a fair assessment of student understanding.
I did give written tests on the book because the teacher I was working with required grades and those tests were very literal. I also had students write letters as a character in the story so they had to look as the story through a character’s eye’s. In addition used a class and individual KWL charts to continually ask and answer questions as we read the story.
July 7, 2008 at 8:47 pm |
Andrea:
I completely agree with you on using rubrics and checklists as great formative assessments. I forgot to mention those in my original blog, but I have used them before and they have proven to me to be great tools of monitoring students’ progress. This way students know exactly what is expected of them before they even complete an assignment. Great idea!
July 7, 2008 at 8:47 pm |
Karen,
July 7, 2008 at 8:48 pm |
I would use an array of formative reading assessments throughout the year. I would do this because I agree with Afferbach that an effective teacher is constantly assessing and re-assessing her students. I feel that to base a decision and or judgment of a student/teacher on one test is bizarre. I would use the following formative assessments: portfolios, running records, quizzes, writing samples, notes, etc to continually assess and re-assess my students for understanding. I like that formative assessment helps teachers monitor their students’ progress and to modify the instruction accordingly.
July 7, 2008 at 8:48 pm |
Diana,
I really like that you use journal entries for a formative assessment. I have never seen that used but it sounds like it works really great. I like that the students can write freely and then you are able to see their advantages and disadvantages of their writing. I may use this idea in the future!
July 7, 2008 at 8:50 pm |
Karen,
Running records would be a great idea! It would def. help to pinpoint a problem which is sometimes hard to do. I aslo like your idea to collect work. It could be put into a portfolio for later use. Great ideas!
July 7, 2008 at 8:50 pm |
As a pre-school teacher I use the Brigance test at the beginning of the year to screen the students coming in. The test assess the student’s basic knowledge on counting, number recognition, visual discrimination, shapes, colors, body parts, personal information, gross motor and fine motor. Also during screening the students have to complete the fluharty language test. This is a quick ten minute assessment of a student’s speech and language development. The five major areas that it covers are articulation, repeating sentences, responding to directives and answering questions and describing actions and sequencing events. Both of these tests are administered by a teacher. Depending on the scores the students receive that will determine if a student should be classified. Before the students enter kindergarten they are screened with the same tests which will show growth or decline from the prior school year. Throughout the year I use running records and teacher observations for assessments.
July 7, 2008 at 8:51 pm |
Katlyn:
I said the same thing about the importance of formative assessments. This way teachers will be able to modify lesson according to the needs of the students. I totally agree!
July 7, 2008 at 8:51 pm |
The formative reading assessment I would use in my classroom would be a combination of daily, weekly, monthly, and quartly assessments. I would assess students homeworks, quizes, tests, oral comprehension of material read, and written work. I would also use rubrics and portfolio collections. I would also use what the school district would require me as a teacher to use. I really would just focus in on if the students are comprehending what they are being taught in the classroom and I see it in their oral and/or written work.
July 7, 2008 at 8:52 pm |
I work in a preschool program. The only formative assessment we use is Batelle Developmental Inventory—Second Edition (BDI-2). It is not a reading test, it focuses on Adaptive, Personal Social, Communication, Motor and Cognitive skills. For pre-reading assessments I use summative assessments. These assessments are at a preschool level and based on pre-reading lesson plans taught on a weekly basis. After teaching a lesson on phonemic awareness, the children are asked to complete an individualized lesson or a small group activity. For example, if we are working on a particular letter, the student may be asked to find an object in a bag that starts with that letter. Some children are assessed on the ability to find the object. Some must take the object and walk on a line made out of masking tape, while repeating the sound of the letter over and over again. We work on one letter and one sound per week.
July 7, 2008 at 8:52 pm |
Patti,
I like how you mentioned using KWL charts. I have used those before with certain topics and they are a great way to find out what they know ahead of time and what they want to know so you can guide your instruction. Also, then you can find out what they really did learn after you teach!
Heather
July 7, 2008 at 8:53 pm |
Julia I am a dibels fan as well. I think atht DIBELS is an accurate way to measure student preformance while cutting back on time that a running record takes. DIBELS also allows us to quickly look at the chart it creates and learn more about the individual student. This was a great idea for who ever thought it up.
July 7, 2008 at 8:54 pm |
Some formative reading assessments I would use in the classroom would be a short test given prior and then another test would be given after. These pre and post tests would give me a way to compare how much the students are understanding on an individual level and as a whole class. This information would help guide my instruction. I have used teacher generated (paragraph form) fill in the blank tests including a word bank. I think quick writes are another way to assess what the students understand. However, I think small group discussions and acitivities and noted observations of how students interact and respond to questions and activities gives a better and realistic assessment. Effective small and/or large group work is beneficial and is measurable. I think a combination of recorded progress, or lack of, observations and finished independent projects, activities and answers can help create teachable moments as well as students self-motivation and confidence.
July 7, 2008 at 8:54 pm |
Diana,
I really liked the free write journal idea. I think that is a great way to check for understanding and progress. It reminds me of a journal portfolio.
Julia and Heather,
I am not familiar with the DIBELS, but from what I know about them I would like to use them as well.
Kimberly,
I think that the small group observations is a great way to assess the students.
July 7, 2008 at 8:56 pm |
Karen,
I think that the use of students collected work is a great way to assess students. I like this much more than a test because you can see where students have grown or slowed down.
July 7, 2008 at 8:56 pm |
Diana,
I really like the use of journal entries as an assessment tool. I feel that this can be used as young as kindergarten because they can draw pictures and use inventive spelling to write a sentence explaining what they feel. I think that as an assessment it is great for 2nd grade and up.
Amy
July 7, 2008 at 8:57 pm |
Cindy,
I know from having AIS students in the past they have a lot of test anxiety. I found that letting them chew gum helped. Also, blueberries are proven to stimulate brain chemistry before taking a test. Next time give them some “Thinking Berries” it might help them to worry less and increase interest and motivation. Jill:)
July 7, 2008 at 8:57 pm |
Karen, you said, “I would also use graphic organizers and sequencing chards to help the students make predictions and sequence story events. Collecting these work samples is another way I could assess the students.”, this way of assessing student reading ability is less stressful on they, and that also give them the opportunity express their thoughts on their reading other than verbally (the may communicate easier in written form.)
July 7, 2008 at 8:58 pm |
Karen,
During my student teaching, I was exposed to running records. It seemed like an ideal way to get individualized scores and on a frequent basis. Using the running records lets you know exactly where a child’s strengths and weaknesses lie. It also helps to know when to move a student up to the next level or maybe even bring them down a level in their reading groups. It also helps the teacher know the reading strategies she must teach the group or the individual. Dianne
July 7, 2008 at 8:58 pm |
Jessica,
I think it’s great that you use observations daily. I was always good about meeting with students, but I was not very good at writing my observations down at first. Now that I do it, I realize how easy it is to look back and see information about the student and decide what to work on with them. Great ideas for formative assessment!
July 7, 2008 at 8:59 pm |
Andrea,
I like the idea of rubrics also, it gives students a clear target to aim for. They know exactly what they need to do to achive a good grade. It also gives you a clear picture of their understanding and how motivated and interested they are in the current topic.
July 7, 2008 at 8:59 pm |
Diana,
I agree that journal entries are a great formative assessment. I teach 4th grade and my students keep a “reading response journal” where they write letters to me on a weekly basis about the books they are reading independently. In this way, they reflect on what they are reading using various reflective helpers in their letter. They have learned to make connections to the text and its characters, ask questions about the author’s purpose, and summarize the text. Also, it is a way for me to be sure that they are actually reading during independent reading time and gives them a purpose for their independent reading.
July 7, 2008 at 8:59 pm |
Andrea,
Do you have a template for the ruberics and the checklists that you use? I would be interested in seeing them and maybe using some form for my classes next year. I agree that assessments make the school atmosphere unpleasant. Being a Special Education teacher, I come accross this on a daily basis. Assessments really turn students that have a difficult time off to school.
Jessica
July 7, 2008 at 9:00 pm |
Patti,
I loved the “grand conversations” I also have little experience teaching reading other thatn student teaching. We used grand conversation in one of my methods class and found it not to be so stressful and a fun way to learn from your peers. I think students would like this activity because they will learn from other students or see it from other perspectives and relate to and argue against topics or ideas.
July 7, 2008 at 9:01 pm |
Connie,
I like that you included weekly reading response journals and oral assessments as formative assessments. I forgot that we are constantly assessing our students orally by asking them questions to check for understanding. I also liked the idea of reading response journals. I have heard of these but have not yet used them. I am looking forward to using them with my 2nd graders next year. I have seen blogs set up for students to discuss and respond to a book they are reading and would love use a response journal in that way.
July 7, 2008 at 9:02 pm |
Thank you Cindy!! I will keep that in mind when I get a regular education classroom!
July 7, 2008 at 9:02 pm |
Carolyn,
Observations when the children are reading are so important. A lot of times you forget specific needs/strengths a student has when grading report cards. You can refer to the notes when needed.
July 7, 2008 at 9:03 pm |
As a first grade teacher, I use many formative assessments to assess my students. For example, I use running records to find a students oral reading ability, letter identification, initial sound identification, phoneme segmentation and so on. I also use completed worksheets and tests to gain a better understanding of each students’ ability. But most importantly, I use daily classroom observations. All of these formative assessments give me a greater understanding of each student’s ability, which I then use to differentiate my instruction.
July 7, 2008 at 9:11 pm |
After reading all of your comments, I am determined to run off a chapter from the book, “Rereading Fluency: Process, Practice, and Policy”. I think that this is information that will be of help to everyone.
July 7, 2008 at 9:14 pm |
Based on some of the other blog posts, I will show you all some great on-line sites where you can create and access rubrics.