Formative assessment, or assessment for learning, is the use of questions, tests, reviews and feedback to encourage learners and allow them to take control. This is a practical guide from www.obrussa.com for teachers and parents.

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Formative Assessment
The tutor-student partnership that delivers results
A guide for tutors and parents

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Contents
1. Introduction
2. What you already know about formative assessment
3. What’s new about formative assessment?
4. Why does formative assessment matter?
5. Three learner questions that drive formative assessment
6. How teachers can answer these questions
7. Shared learning goals – the hub of formative assessment
8. The teaching skills that bring the learning partnership to life
9. How formative assessment makes students better learners
10. The way forward – formative assessment and technology

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Introduction
What does assessment mean to you? For most people assessment is all
about tests or exams that measure learning and competency. This
approach, where the evaluation is the end product, is known as
summative assessment.
But formative assessment is different. It is a dynamic collaboration between
teacher and student designed to improve learning, not audit it. It is
assessment for learning rather than assessment of learning.

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Assessment for learning is driven by 3 learner questions
Where am I going?
– What do I need to learn?
Where am I now?
– What do I know now in relation to what I need to learn?
How do I get there?
– How do I bridge the gap between what I know now and what I need to
learn?

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4 ways in which teachers use assessment to help students
• Tell students where they’re going by sharing learning objectives
• Assess what students understand now - supported by skilful questions
• Decide what to do next - based on the assessment
• Give feedback so students know how to improve.

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This presentation
In this presentation we discover how formative assessment can do more than
help students achieve course or syllabus goals. That when teachers role
model great questioning and feedback skills, over time students can
become independent learners of any subject who know how to learn, not
just what to learn.
We also see how technology complements what great teachers do
naturally. And how in this digital age it allows teachers to create learning
experiences that reflect students’ daily lives and the reality of their future.

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Formative assessment – in your experience
If you were asked to name your top three learning experiences, what would
they be? When were you most engaged and most confident in developing
your understanding and applying new skills? Think widely. Take your pick
from driving lessons, learning a language to conquering a maths topic.
Choose one of your top three learning experiences and then answer ‘yes’ or
‘no’ to these questions.

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Questions to ask about your own learning experiences
• Did you know what you wanted to achieve? Were you clear about your
learning goal?
• Did someone observe you to see what you were doing well and not so
well?
• And in response:
• Did they explain things differently or demonstrate the skill in another
way? Did they give you a new activity to help you understand, develop
your skill and get it right?
• Did they give you feedback on what you did well and how to reach the
objective, so you felt motivated to keep trying?
• Did they ask stimulating questions to challenge your assumptions or help
you reframe your thinking?
• Did they provide clear, achievable steps to help you move towards your
learning goal?
• Did you have the chance to think about their feedback, ask questions and
then together plan how to implement the steps?

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If you answered ‘yes’ to these questions then your positive learning
experience was in fact a blend of teaching and assessment that together
embrace the principles of formative assessment.
So if you answered ‘yes’ it means you’ve experienced the benefits of
assessment for learning. And you know first-hand how the process works
for learners.

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‘Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel’
—Socrates
This process of gathering evidence to inform what to teach next in order to
improve learning has been around since the time of Socrates. The
European Guilds of the Middle-Ages onwards also practised this
continuous feedback approach to learning and skills development.
But the partnership approach between teacher and student was eroded with
the rise of one-way teaching approaches – ‘chalk and talk’ lessons and
university lectures for example - where teachers imparted knowledge to
passive students.

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Recent history
It is only in the last 40 or so years that the inclusion of formative assessment
principles in our classrooms has shifted the balance back towards a
learning partnership between teacher and student.
This shift hasn’t happened over night. Michael Scriven coined the term
‘formative’ in the late 1960s and while others built on and refined the
principles it wasn’t until Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam’s 1998 influential
book ‘Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom
Assessment’ that these ideas started to really take hold and become part
of day-to-day classroom practice.
So as history demonstrates formative assessment is not one of the many
educational reforms that come and go. Its principles are rooted in how
we’ve always learnt best and in what research now tells us about how
people learn.

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Definition
If we bring together all the questions you answered about your positive
learning experience we could come up with a definition like this:
Formative assessment is an active learning process where teacher and
students gather evidence of progress with the intention of improving
learning outcomes.
Most books on formative assessment include at least two or three definitions
along these lines, with variations to emphasise the theme of a particular
chapter for example.

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These types of definitions are helpful in capturing the overall process but they
don’t always reflect the wider outcomes. So let’s take a broader look at
what defines formative assessment in terms of why it matters; why should
we care?
It matters because its benefits reach further than improving learning
outcomes for a particular syllabus or programme. Over time, assessment
for learning also develops the students themselves – it promotes a
positive attitude to learning and develops skilled learners of any subject
area.

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What formative assessment delivers
• Confident, engaged learners
• Students who are motivated to learn
• Students who know how to learn, not just what to learn.
• Learners who develop critical thinking skills

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Integrating assessment and teaching
The short answer is with a blend of teaching and assessment. Integrating
assessment into teaching is crucial because, as the saying goes, the best
laid plans go awry. And for teachers that means no matter how well you
plan a lesson you cannot predict what your students will actually learn.
So minute-by-minute and day-by-day formative assessment provides the
opportunity to adjust the lesson plan as you go – what and how you teach
- based on evidence of learners’ progress so they can achieve the learning
goal.
Here’s how formative assessment works and what teachers do in response to
learners’ three questions.

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The questions teachers can help learners to answer
Where am I going?
Share learning goals/objectives and success criteria
Where am I now?
Create learning activities which generate evidence of what learners currently
know/don’t know or do well/not so well in relation to the goal or objective
Ask strategic questions which help learners gauge their current
understanding/skill level in relation to the learning objective
Help students accurately and honestly assess their own learning progress
Give feedback on students’ progress so they know where they are in relation
to the learning goal

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The questions teachers can help learners to answer
How do I get there?
Ask strategic questions which elicit information about learners’ understanding
so the teacher can decide what to do next
Enable students to ask effective questions which lead to new insights and
further their understanding
Give actionable feedback designed to help close the gap between where
students are now and where they need to be to achieve the learning goal.
Adjust teaching approach based on the evidence gathered to help close the
gap
Help students become independent learners via self-assessment skills and the
habit of reflecting on their own learning
Activate peer learning which builds independent learning, social and
workplace skills

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Shared learning objectives are at the heart of assessment for
learning.
Here’s how they drive the process:
The teacher collects evidence of current understanding against learning goals,
and analyses student progress, towards them.
Feedback directly relates to progress towards learning goals and what
students need to do to meet them.
Teachers adjust their teaching based on how best to help students reach the
learning goals.

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Shared learning goals build learner independence
Shared learning goals and success criteria help learners become more
independent because they provide the opportunity for students to self-
assess. With clear goals and criteria they have something against which to
measure what they know and can do at any point in their learning.
It’s important to share success criteria, as well as goals, because students
need to know what counts as quality work. This might mean showing
workings for solving maths problems or including specified criteria such as
characterisation in creative writing for example.

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Student self-assessment builds independence
Show students a range of completed task examples and ask them to grade
them from worst to best with reasons why.
This firstly helps students develop a deeper understanding of the goal and
success criteria. It also encourages them to think critically about whether
their own work meets them; the completed examples provide a
framework for learners to ask themselves, ‘what steps do I need to take
so I can demonstrate the success criteria’?
They start to answer the questions ‘Where am I now’? and ‘How do I get
there?’ for themselves.

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Teaching skills that bring the learning partnership to life
Strategic questioning is a dynamic exchange of question and response which
helps both teacher and student establish current understanding and
improve learning.
Teacher feedback enables students to actively participate in their own
learning. Because at each stage of the formative assessment process –
Where am I going? Where am I now? How do I get there? - they know
how they’re doing and what to do next.

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Strategic questioning
Questions are the powerhouse of teacher-student interactions and
conversations.
This question and response approach is a planned part of formative
assessment. It’s designed to help both teacher and students measure
current learning – ‘Where am I now’? – and improve learning – ‘How do I
get there’?
To be clear, these are not the questions that simply ask students to recall a
fact or formula. These questions are designed to get students thinking
and engaged with the subject. They require students to become active
partners in the learning process.

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Socratic questions
We started off by saying that the principles of formative assessment – using
evidence of current learning to decide what to teach next – dates back to
the time of Socrates. Famously, Socrates believed that questioning and
teaching are one and the same thing; he taught by asking questions.
Here’s how skilled questioning fits the formative assessment process. The
approach works for both groups of students and individual learners.

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Where am I now? - Collect evidence of current understanding
in relation to the learning objective
Here are some key question types – all of which need to relate to some
aspect of the learning objectives and success criteria – that the teacher
might ask to establish current understanding.
Questions which:
• Probe the nature of the problem, topic or subject area
• Elicit what students already know about related topics
• Ask students to justify or explain their thinking
• Ask for evidence of current thinking

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How do I get there? - What do I need to do to reach the
learning goal?
The Socratic questioning approach also improves learning by helping students
move from their current understanding to consider new approaches that
help them meet the learning goal.
The teacher asks questions which:
• Challenge assumptions to help students shift their thinking
• Help learners analyse the implications or consequence of what they are
saying
• Make connections with past learning, other subjects and relevant
examples to promote or broaden understanding
• Introduce alternative approaches and perspectives
• Nurture insights

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Strategic questions and Bloom’s taxonomy
Knowledge: What’s the definition of …? What 3 things do you know about …?
Comprehension: Why does ... Matter? How does this relate to ….?
Application: When would you use ….? What do you think the outcome will
be?
Analysis: How does …. compare with XYZ? What evidence backs up ...?
Synthesis: How can you solve this problem? How can you combine these two
ideas to …?

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How do you give feedback?
The intention of effective feedback is to improve learning and
performance. And that means feedback should help students close the
gap between where they are now and where they need to be to achieve
the learning goal.
To do this, feedback needs to make learners think, to actively engage with
their own learning so they can move forward. However, the barrier to this
rational approach is that so often our response to feedback is emotional
not cognitive. In fact, it’s an instinctive human reaction. Think back to the
last time you received feedback. Was it positive or negative? How did it
make you feel? Gutted, annoyed, quietly chuffed or maybe ecstatic?

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Negative feedback hurts
When we hear we haven’t done so well it can set off a train of negative
thoughts about the:
Present – ‘I'm useless’, ‘I always get things wrong’
Past - ‘I’ve always been rubbish at maths’
Future - ‘I'll never get it right’.
We look for past examples that confirm the feedback and negatively forecast
about the future to conclude that we'll never be any good at maths. And
the problem with frustration and negative emotions is that they can shut
down key parts of the brain required for learning.

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Positive feedback isn’t good in itself
Feeling great about how well we’ve done doesn’t lead to improved learning
either. A common response to positive feedback is to congratulate
ourselves on a job well done, to relax a bit. The implicit message being we
can afford to exert less effort next time.
So the challenge for the teacher is to give feedback which doesn’t simply
describe what the student has done well or not so well. The feedback
should answer the question ‘What next?’ for the learner.

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Attributes of great feedback
• Provides actionable steps to help the learner improve and reach the
learning goal
• Makes learners reflect on how to improve specific aspects of their work - a
grade or mark does not achieve this.
• Focuses on how to improve regardless of student ability.
• Demands the same amount of work for each student regardless of
ability. Feedback is not seen as a punishment for less able students.
• Focuses on both the work and process the student used to complete the
activity
• Provides enough detail to give a clear sense of progress against the goal
and criteria. But not so detailed that it overwhelms the student.
• Is given as close to when the student did the work as possible. The longer
the time lapse the less motivated we feel to action it.

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Written vs. verbal feedback: written
• More permanent than verbal feedback. Learners can access it as they
review and revise their work.
• Students have a record of the feedback which encourages independent
learning
• Comments, symbols, underlining etc can be positioned at specific
points. So learners know precisely what the feedback applies to
• Online written feedback is instant and two-way

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Written vs. verbal feedback: verbal
• Can be made as students work as part of the student-teacher dialogue
• Body language and tone of voice convey encouragement and motivate
learners
• Teachers can see first-hand students’ reaction to the feedback
• Helps build the teacher-student relationship and build trust
• Helpful where the amount to say may be overwhelming as written
feedback

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Feedback develops learner independence
Learners who are less reliant on the teacher are able to self-assess. Teacher
feedback helps learners develop this skill because feedback and learner
self-assessment are related activities.
They both:
• Compare student work against success criteria and the learning target
• Identify the next steps needed for improvement

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‘What’s next’ feedback motivates learners
• Encourages persistence - learners know what they need to do to succeed
• Fosters a sense of control - particularly when learners have a choice of
strategies
• Promotes goal-directed behaviour
• Builds self-belief - learners achieve objectives by their own actions
• Energises learners – students are more motivated when they believe their
tutor wants them to succeed

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Teaching students to assess themselves
Teaching self-assessment skills needs to be systematic and to refer to the
goals and success criteria. We aim to teach students to:
• Use the success criteria to assess their own work. The teacher then
provides feedback on the quality of the self-assessment.
• Highlight the success criteria they think applies to their own work. The
teacher highlights the criteria that apply to the student’s work and asks
the student to analyse and reflect on any differences.
• Keep learning portfolios to review their learning development. Instead of
simply focusing on the latest and best work, students review tasks
completed over a time period against specified criteria. This approach is
helpful for developing confidence. When students see progress as
incremental it helps dispel the negative and self-defeating view that ability
is fixed.

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Teaching students to assess themselves
Keep learning logs to develop the skill and habit of reflecting on their
learning. For example, students might finish 3 of these statements:
– The most useful thing I learned was
– What I enjoyed about the lesson was
– I was surprised by
– I was interested in
– I’m still not sure about
– I’d like to know more about
– I might have learnt more if

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Peer learning
Peer learning as part of the formative assessment process also helps build
independent learning skills. In itself collaborative learning is a powerful
way to learn, but it also equips students with important workplace skills:
listening, team working, joint problem solving, empathy and
communication skills for example.

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Peer learning in groups
Students need lots of guidance to make peer learning effective and this starts
with shared learning goals.
Students need lots of guidance to make peer learning effective and this starts
with shared learning goals.
Group activities can encourage less confident learners to ask questions. It’s
much easier for the group to ask a question because individuals don’t
have to appear stupid in front of the whole class.
And talking things through with peers can in itself make students more
confident about asking questions.

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Peer feedback
Peer feedback is a key element of peer learning, but it is not an abdication of
teaching responsibilities. It is a valid teaching approach with clear
benefits for students who both give and receive feedback.

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Benefits for students giving feedback
• The process of explaining something deepens understanding; you never
really fully understand something until you have to teach it. Articulating
how a process works or what something means, requires you to fully
engage with all aspects of the problem or subject area. You can’t just skim
over areas you only more or less understand.
• Students competent in a subject develop the ability to communicate what
they know. This is not the same as simply knowing or understanding and
is an important skill. Scientists for example have to communicate their
findings or research to peers.
• Engaging with the learning objectives and success criteria in the context of
someone else’s work makes you think about them in a different way. And
without the emotion involved in your own work so you can be more
objective about the process.

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Benefits for students receiving feedback
• Explanations may be easier to understand as peers, particularly young
people, explain things in a shared language
• Learners are often less afraid to ask a peer to slow down or go over
something again. They tend to be more direct and clearer about their
needs than they are with a teacher
• Learners are also less likely to pretend they understand. Students tell the
teacher they understand - when they don’t - because they don’t want to:
• Appear foolish in front of the teacher or the whole class
• Take up the teacher’s time when it seems that everyone else
understands

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Some ideas for peer assessment
Homework help board
– Students write problems/questions from last night’s homework on the
board. Student who thinks they can is encouraged to find their peer
and provide help.
Two stars and a wish
– A peer gives feedback on a student’s work: two things that were good
and one suggestion for improvement. They write them on post its so
they can be removed if the student doesn’t find them helpful.
– The teacher then anonymously shares some feedback examples and
asks students to vote on whether it was helpful and how it could be
improved. This approach develops learners' feedback skills.

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Technology and formative assessment: a selection of tools
Videos with the facility for teachers to embed questions that check
understanding, for example
Interactive white board apps
Assessment tools with learner feedback, recommended learning resources
and analytics of results for the teacher
Quizzes, exercises and games that students can play on their smart phones,
laptops or tablets

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Technology and formative assessment: a selection of tools
Tools where teachers can see answers to and feedback on questions in real
time
Feedback polls where teachers can see results in real time
Virtual notice boards with sticky notes so students can write questions or
comments about their learning at any stage of the learning process
Collaborative tools which students and teachers can use in and outside the
classroom. Students can add their thoughts and answers to the
whiteboard
Documents that allow students to collaborate in real time using laptops and
tablets
Tools that stimulate visual thinking
Mind mapping tools which reveal student thinking and learning approaches

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Technology and formative assessment: an example
Here’s a real-life example which shows how technology can counteract the
problem of students’ saying they understand, when actually they don’t.
During a lesson on binary numbers the students said they all understood
and were ready to move on. To test this, the teacher set a problem using
an online assessment tool. Students entered their answers which
appeared on the teacher’s screen alongside their names. To her surprise,
although everyone had said they understood, only two students got the
answer right. This immediately and very quickly gave her an accurate
answer to ‘where am I now?’ for the whole class.

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Technology: Benefits for teachers
Provides quick, real-time assessment of what learners know so teachers can accurately
adjust teaching within the lesson time.
Quickly and accurately identifies learning gaps. This helps supply teachers or tutors with
frequent new students optimise teaching time.
Makes it easier to give differentiated feedback to a large class. Teachers can quickly see
who needs help with what.
Addresses the need for differentiation - teachers can assign different online activities within
the same subject area to different students.
Saves time for teachers in both marking and giving feedback on common errors. They can
spend time on what matters – adjusting teaching to meet individual and class needs
Provides detailed analytics so the teacher has an overview of the whole classes’
understanding. A teacher can easily identify key areas that may need reviewing.
Provides timely feedback for large classes. Students don’t have to wait for teachers to hand
mark - delayed feedback makes us less motivated to act on it.
Helps teachers create effective peer learning activities. It’s easy to accurately identify
students with similar or different levels of understanding and then group them to suit
the aim of the activity.

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Technology: Benefits for learners
Students can see results immediately – they can monitor their own learning
and have the opportunity to identify gaps for themselves.
Learners get immediate feedback designed to help them identify what to do
next. They don’t always have to wait for teacher input.
Chat /IM tools allow students, who are reluctant to put up their hands, to let
the teacher know they don’t understand.
Games based activities encourage active participation because they are
motivating and fun
Students are used to co-operating in many online gaming environments. And
collaborating on line fits the way they live their lives.
Online team activities mean students can work out problems as a group. A
shared learning goal encourages pupils to work collaboratively and
develops social and workplace skills.

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Formative Assessment
The tutor-student partnership that delivers results
A guide for tutors and parents
For more information, visit http://www.obrussa.com