Week 4 Discussion 1

Formative and Summative Assessments:

Discussion Question?

1.      Help Ingrid to understand how the district’s CFA can assist her instruction effort? Give her currant second-quarter goal. Offer one suggestion for and appropriate formative assessment strategies on language and in math?

 1a. I think that Ingrid should make sure she is teaching exactly what the CFA’s  are on a daily basis, because we know as teachers things can change very quickly and at the last minute, without you knowing it. She should ask the curriculum coach to come to her class at least once a week to reassure that she is teaching the curriculum correctly to the students, also she could give a weekly teacher made text to make sure that all students are on track to what is being taught.

1b. for her second quarter goal she should, after given students weekly test gather the data to help her to recognize which student is on the right track or what student may be stillstruggling. Develop a growth chart whereas you can help the parent/student know exactly what they need to work on before it’s time for the assessment test this will help student performance. Continue to use the white board have students write out a question dealing with math, this way they are really learning the meaning of math words, which also teaching them how to spell (language arts).

2.      Advice for Melanie: it is certainly true that Ms. Melanie has her hands full, dealing with kindergartners a very energetic age group. And making sure each student is learning and receiving what they should at a timely matter is a job of its own. Ms. Melanie have to release that some students go through tremendous growth during different phases, but they will continue to develop throughout the year. Their cognitive learning takes place doing different spurts and not all at once. To help Ms. Melanie make sure that her developing assessment are reached with all of her student, and keep them happy. She must be aware that some students attended pre-school and some may have not. She would have to repeat a lesson over and over again. And there is some that will catch on faster than others and some may not, but don’t feel discourage from that. Students love music as one as the learning tools to incorporate into her lesson plans, it may get old to her, but kindergartners never gets tired. I work in a FLS class in some of our students are on kindergarten level, we are going over money, we use You Tube to re-enforce it with songs, they knew they beat of each songs and the words, after a few weeks of this we give them a test on the computer on money. Star fall is another learning site we use, I suggest that you try these, you will really see the difference after a couple of weeks.

3.      How and why Formative assessment: is used by teachers as a part of a process to help teachers, so that they can adjust to what they are teaching in the students are learning to help improve students achievement in their core content classes.

3b. why Summative assessment are : this is given often throughout the school year to see what the student knows or how much they don’t know, such as benchmark testing, semester exam, end of six weeks exam.

Britt

•Help Ingrid to understand how the district’s CFA can assist her instructional efforts. Given her current second-quarter goals, offer one suggestion for an appropriate formative assessment strategy in Language Arts and in Math.

To help Ingrid I would give her a clear understanding of what the district’s common formative assessment means for her and help her to understand the benefit that can come from these assessments. Ingrid needs to have strategies in place that will give assistance to the students prior to the CFA’s being given.   As a suggestion for a formative assessment strategy in Language Arts, I’d suggest using white boards to assess what the students learned from the curriculum on the particular lesson. Students love using whiteboards and tend to be more confident sometimes writing answers on them than paper. For a math formative assessment, I’d suggest, a group discussion where you end with an exit question. Math is so much pencil and paper it is a nice change sometimes to have oral discussions and this is where that can come in handy.

•What advice would you give Melanie for developing assessments for learning that encourage and bring smiles to her kindergartners?  In kindergarten assessments can be tricky because you cannot leave the majority of your class to work with one student on a CFA.  I would tell Melanie to have an assessment ‘party’. On the formative assessment day have different stations set up with a fun art project (minimal like a coloring sheet or play-doh) and a light snack such as pretzels or raisins.  Use aides or parent volunteers to man the stations as you do formative assessments for an allotted period of time.

•Discuss how and why formative assessment is considered assessment for learning, and why summative assessments are considered assessment of learning. What advice would you give these teachers to help them consider the advantages of each? Formative assessments are a measurement of what students have learned. These types of assessments show us if the students are meeting the standards placed before them.  A summative assessment is a graded report showing educational result of what has been taught.  I would show these teachers the evidence that data shows from these assessments.