Formative Assessment

So I have been teaching long enough now to see things have different names that fit the “pendulum timing” but really mean the same thing. When I think back several years, formative assessment wasn’t a term anyone really used.  Then we had this fancy training on the topic, and we all realized,
“oh, that’s something already do. I just didn’t call it that.”

But was it? Are formative assessments the same as class work, quizzes, daily grades? I thought they were at first, but I learned that they are not necessarily the same. If I give a quiz, or a class work assignment, and the results don’t change my small group or whole group instruction for the next few lessons, it wasn’t a formative assessment. If it doesn’t INFORM anyone or anything except the grade point average, it isn’t FORMATIVE.

 Tomorrow, the Georgia Department of Education will visit my school for a formative STEM certification visit. Despite how hard we have worked as a school, how tirelessly the STEM team has shared, how passionately I have preached and modeled, we will be given feedback. As a teacher leader, it is my job to make sure the feedback is a true formative assessment. I can’t get defensive of my work or the work of my team. I must turn the feedback into fuel for growth.

I’d love your thoughts and wisdom on taking feedback. I’d like to grow in that area!!