Formative Assessment

1. Formative Assessment
SPED 507
Fall 2013

2. Important of Assessment
"Nothing we do to, or for our students is more
important than our assessment of their work and
the feedback we give them on it. The results of
our assessment influence students for the rest of
their lives..."
Race et al.

3. Assessment and its associated feedback are essential to student
learning. However, you may find that more of your time is
taken up with the areas of assessment associated with quality
assurance, rather than its potential to support students' learning.
Well designed assessment has numerous benefits aside from the
obvious one of providing a measure of students' progress as it
can be a means to engage students with their learning. Ideally
then, you should aim to support active learning rather than
Assessment of Learning to ensure that the assessment process
is an integral part of your students' education.

4. What is Assessment for
Learning?
Assessment for Learning focuses on the opportunities to develop
students' ability to evaluate themselves, to make judgments about
their own performance and improve upon it. It makes use of
authentic assessment methods and offers lots of opportunities for
students to develop their skills through formative assessment using
summative assessment sparingly.