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Formative assessments for the Formative years...

Here’s what I’ve learned about formative assessments this week:

They can and should be happening alongside teaching

Formative assessments can be used at any level of learning

Keys to success: discreet or relatively low pressure formative assessments yield the best results

There are some pretty cool tech tools that can help with formative assessments!

Formative assessments are only useful if you USE the data. When creating and using formative assessments, be mindful of how you will track and use the data you gather.

This week I chose three different formative assessments to use with my young learners. 

Stoplight check, Exit tickets, and Plickers.

I thought about how well these assessments would work with my students and modified them to adapt to my specific needs. Two of my cohort peers took a look at my work and provided comments and feedback.

In receiving feedback I was able to see where I was making assumptions about my reader. There were details that I didn’t make explicit and clear because it didn’t even occur to me to mention. I know my class and classroom size, how my class generally behaves, my particular constraints, and how my class flows in general. In the future I need to be more detailed when designing lesson plans as well as assessments. 

For example, the first assessment that I wrote about was a “stoplight check” where students hold their thumbs up, sideways, or down to indicate understanding. I went a step further and said that I would like students to use the hand signal at their tables while waiting for assistance. One of my peers suggested that I make key ring for each student so they can flip to the right card and continue to work while I move about the classroom helping anyone indicating that they need more help. This was a wonderful idea that I have seen versions of used online. However, I specifically didn’t choose this method because a) My tables are very small and crowded. Sometimes they can barely fit their curriculum books without overlap b) My students do not need another distraction at their table and unfortunately that’s what a key ring as suggested would become Feedback can be difficult to receive, but getting another perspective from a colleague allows a fresh set of eyes to see things from a different angle. We all come to education with different backgrounds and experiences. Even though I will not use that specific idea, it made me think about my methods and why I chose to do it the way that I did. It showed me there was room for improvement and that my explanations may not have given adequate detail.

Aside from the feedback this week, I learned about several tech tools for formative assessments. 

The two that I explored the most were: Kahoot and Plickers If you’re interested in integrating tech into your formative assessments, Kahoot would be a great place to start. Plickers may be as well, depending on age level and if you’re able to do a little prep work printing the cards and additional work to modify it for the kindergarten level. In my experience, preschool and kindergarten students aren’t given enough credit for what they are able to understand, learn, and do. At this age, kids are passionate and fearless. In fact, there’s no limit to what they can achieve and their future is unwritten. Limiting what they are able to try does them a great disservice. My point is, preschool and kindergarten teachers should absolutely be doing formative assessments multiple times a day in a seamless way that coincides with teaching. The amount of knowledge that students this age absorb is astonishing. One of the most rewarding things about teaching young learners are the changes you can so clearly see in students’ abilities. The best thing a teacher can do is strive to ensure that everyone is reaching their full abilities within the classroom and one way of making sure that is happening is by giving formative assessments.  Brosig, T. (2017, March 29). Using Exit Tickets in Kindergarten. Retrieved October 16, 2018, from http://kteachertiff.com/2015/01/using-exit-tickets-in-kindergarten.html Cleaver, S. (2017, August 09). 15 Ways to Know When Your Students Aren't "Getting" It. Retrieved October 16, 2018, from https://www.weareteachers.com/15-ways-to-know-when-your-students-arent-getting-it-a-guide-to-formative-assessment/ 

Amoson, M. (2014, July 19). Assess for Success with PLICKERS App. Retrieved October 16, 2018, from http://sharingkindergarten.com/assess-for-success-with-plickers-app/

[msjoannastack-blog]

[msjoannastack-blog]

In Ghana right now there’s a lot riding on getting your child to read by age 5. No one can pinpoint precisely when these expectations started. But there’s a widespread sense that Africa is rising.

Parents — even those with very low incomes — are putting their children in private schools at younger and younger ages. It’s estimated that in Accra, Ghana’s capital city, by the time children reach age 3, 80 percent of them are in preschool, twice the share in the United States.

What We Can Learn From Ghana’s Obsession With Preschool - #HowToRaiseAHuman series by @nprglobalhealth

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The goal of education should be creating people capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered.

Jean Piaget (via theemotionmachine)

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Like many parents this time of year, journalist Jessica Grose is sending her daughter off to school for the first time. As a working parent, she wonders, a lot, not only about what her child will face – but what she will.  Grose is the editor of Lenny, Lena Dunham’s email newsletter. And you might remember her from the panel discussion we had on Fresh Air in July about women’s voices — 

After we decided on the right preschool for us, we were informed that we must provide snacks for the whole class on a rotating basis. They sent a list of acceptable snacks, which included fresh fruits and veggies, no sugar cereal, and they name-checked Cheddar Bunnies—the upscale version of Goldfish crackers—specifically. When I got the list I had a mental image of myself running to the supermarket at 9 on a work night, because I had forgotten about snack week on top of all the other picayune details of my daughter’s schedule of play dates and doctor’s appointments and birthday parties.  Certainly an extra supermarket trip for cheddar bunnies is not a big deal in the scheme of things. But I know that this is only the beginning of more than a decade of increasing obligation: of pressure to join the PTA and to become the class parent and to bake cookies and to raise money, even at public schools…Mothers, in particular, bear the brunt of this time suck. Schulte notes that working moms now spend as much time taking care of their kids as stay-at-home moms did in the 60s: 11 hours a week, that’s compared with 7 hours a week for working dads.  

Preschool And Privilege: When Early Education Hinges On Parental Flexibility

Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images