The Formative Assessment Learning Cycle

Formative assessment is a process, acted out in a formative learning cycle, that partners the teacher and the student to regularly gather evidence of learning with the express goal of improving student achievement. Formative assessment is most effective in classrooms in which the learning cycle enables students to Understand what they are trying to learn and the criteria by which they can assess that learning. Produce evidence of how they are doing. Receive formative feedback. Use the feedback to improve the quality of their work. In this guide, experts Susan M. Brookhart and Jay McTighe show how best to incorporate the formative learning cycle into everyday instruction. They offer techniques for sharing learning targets, assessment activities to use in the classroom, and strategies for providing student feedback. 8.5" x 11" 3-panel foldout guide (6 pages), laminated for extra durability and 3-hole-punched for binder storage.

In this handy guide, authors Brookhart and McTighe offer techniques, strategies, and student activities designed to improve the formative assessment process.

The authors provide teachers and staff developers with a research-based process for establishing quality instructional goals and implementing ongoing formative assessment to help students reach learning goals.

This book shows you how to improve student achievement by providing them with frequent feedback on their work. It provides a step-by-step process to help you write good questions that asses student learning, design your own formative assessments, administer short-cycle assessments, analyze and use data to shape instruction, prepare your students for high-stakes tests, and includes activities and forms to walk you through the process step by step.

Using clear explanations and cases, this must-have resource shows how formative assessment can improve student learning. Included are lesson plans and ideas for easy implementation.

Despite feedback‘s demonstratively positive effects on student performance, research on the specific components of successful feedback practice is in short supply. In Using Feedback to Improve Learning, Ruiz-Primo and Brookhart offer critical characteristics of feedback strategies to affirm classroom feedback’s positive effect on student learning. The book provides pre- and in-service teachers as well as educational researchers with empirically supported techniques for using feedback as a part of formative assessment in the classroom.

Testing expert W. James Popham provides the definitive nuts-and-bolts introduction to formative assessment, a process with the power to transform teaching and learning.

Formative assessment is one of the best ways to increase student learning and enhance teacher quality. But effective formative assessment is not part of most classrooms, largely because teachers misunderstand what it is and don't have the necessary skills to implement it. In the updated 2nd edition of this practical guide for school leaders, authors Connie M. Moss and Susan M. Brookhart define formative assessment as an active, continual process in which teachers and students work together—every day, every minute—to gather evidence of learning, always keeping in mind three guiding questions: Where am I going? Where am I now? What strategy or strategies can help me get to where I need to go? Chapters focus on the six interrelated elements of formative assessment: (1) shared learning targets and criteria for success, (2) feedback that feeds learning forward, (3) student self-assessment and peer assessment, (4) student goal setting, (5) strategic teacher questioning, and (6) student engagement in asking effective questions. Using specific examples based on their extensive work with teachers, the authors provide - Strategic talking points and conversation starters to address common misconceptions about formative assessment; - Practical classroom strategies to share with teachers that cultivate students as self-regulated, assessment-capable learners; - Ways to model the elements of formative assessment in conversations with teachers about their professional learning; - "What if" scenarios and advice for how to deal with them; and - Questions for reflection to gauge understanding and progress. As Moss and Brookhart emphasize, the goal is not to "do" formative assessment, but to embrace a major cultural change that moves away from teacher-led instruction to a partnership of intentional inquiry between student and teacher, with better teaching and learning as the outcome.