How do you assess your students learning? Summative and Formative assessments in Elementary Schools

A couple of weeks ago I was listing to a #EDCHAT podcast on assessments (formative and summative) while running on the treadmill (one of the best ways I have found to get past the boredom) and it made me think more about how we assess our students in schools.  A few of the discussion points focused on standardized assessments based on geographic locations whether it was an end of course/grade or ISTEP.  These assessments are the most natural summative assessments as teachers and school leaders do not receive scores that impact the students’ learning and most of the data is very vague in assisting with the planning process.  This just strengthens our need to have a way to assess our students that impacts our teaching and more importantly their learning. 

At #NCTIES2015 I had the opportunity to hear from a group of educators from Flat Rock Elementary in Surry County who shared their top 8 ways to assess without a formal test. Here are some of them (I added in Socrative)

Some great tools to use:

QR Codes codes

kubbu (have to log every 180 days) --

Google Forms infuselearning.com

Socrative – 3 types of ways of giving the assessments – self paced, groups paced, or teacher paced

Plickers - no ipad app yet just phone

Evernote

Jeopardy Labs - create jeopardy games with up to 12 teams

Kahoot

All of these tools are good to use with kids, but to truly be a formative assessment and impact learning students need to receive immediate feedback.  Feedback needs to be more than “good or not correct”.  Each of these tools starts the conversation but isn’t the whole conversation.  It is important for our teachers to create assessments that start the conversation and then have the power to extend the assessments and not just move to the next question.  If you just move on the next questions are teachers needed?  I continue to see more and more nicely wrapped educational software and sites that will “fix” students.  Many of these sites are neat and provide great practice for students, but do we want to teach our students through a one-sided computer?  

I hope not…

Collaboration

What is collaboration? - Collaborate is defined as to work, one with another; cooperate, as on a literary work: Collaboration is defined as a product resulting from collaboration:

What characteristic are needed to have a collaborative culture? Trust, open to ideas, safe space, tough skin, open to feedback and discussions,

What are the tools needed to create a learning environment that supports and encourages collaboration?  time, space and people

tools - join me, Google Apps, Skype, Google +, Google Hangout. Projector Apple TV or Chrome cast, to showcase the product that you are working on to the group. If you are using a Google Application such as Drive (document) collaborators are able to see the changes as they happen or through the comments section in the document.



 How do you collaborate successful?

Using data to drive instruction

Am I a pessimistic when I say that I don't agree with just looking at an end of grade test score or an SAT score and saying this student needs x,y, and z?  Maybe this comes from my history as a student that didn't score high enough on his ITBS and had to go to summer school in fifth grade....maybe its the fact that my life rarely consists of multiple choice problems.  Yes I do have, "I want to go out to dinner to either Boston Market, Panera, or Jet's Pizza", but I wouldn't call that a problem more of a luxury. 

I value the day to day assessments, the quick check/quiz, and multiple facet assignments.  I would like to see more using Interactive Clickers / response systems (socrative.com, http://www.einstruction.com/ and http://smarttech.com/response).   There are many applications that (IXL, Study Island) support students in a day to day, real life problem solving tool.  There are also companies that have devices (Scantron) that make it easy to score and analyze results. 

We need to continue to assess our students, programs, and teaching methods in a effective manner, but let's broaden our scope to more then just a one three hour test in May (or June for year round schools).  With constant discussion about students' progress (or lack of) we will be able to have a true picture of how effective our teaching really is or isn't for our students.