Formative Assessment...some reflections

Yesterday, I spent the day facilitating two sessions on formative assessment and some implications for its use were raised.

The range of strategies used as part of formative assessment seem to have multiplied extensively and these provide teachers with the chance to offer students a wide variety of activities, all of which have the capacity to measure students' learning. Long gone are the days where students would RAG their learning in either a chart, through a fan or through pieces of coloured card attached to a key ring.

But, do all these strategies detract from what formative assessment should really be? It should be 'Assessment for Learning' - and by this term I do not mean the acronym AFL that is banded around schools. I mean it in the truest sense - 'assessment FOR learning'. It made me wonder: how many times have teachers believed they have covered AFL by using one of the strategies above and how many times have teachers adapted or revised their teaching and planning based on the results? And, I have certainly made this mistake in the past!

When using these strategies the word 'for' must be of prime importance as if the strategy has no impact on what goes on in the classroom and the teacher does not adapt their teaching, then it just becomes another form of 'assessment of learning'. For example, a learning pass becomes futile if at the end of the lesson a student hands it to the teacher and it is then placed in a pile or box somewhere to collect dust. If the teacher does not read the learning pass and act on the answers received then it becomes a meaningless activity.

Formative assessment should not be about gimmicks...it must be underpinned by an understanding of what it means in its purist form.

So for this week, I will be reflecting on my own use of AFL using the following:

As always, comments and suggestions are welcome!