I spent my 391 practicum in Mrs. R’s grade 2 class, where most of the assessment I did was formative. My CT’s philosophy was that seven year olds benefit more from formative, progress based assessment than tests or definitive marks. This was a philosophy that I also felt was probably true, and, as it was my CT’s philosophy, I followed it during my practicum, through which, among other one-off lessons, I taught the entirety of the geometry and water cycle units.
Through this progress-based assessment style, my goal was to make sure students were actually learning what I wanted them to learn. If, for example, the lesson had a worksheet or some sort of physical product, this would be handed in or put at the side of the classroom when the lesson was finished. During the lesson, I would walk around and help students where needed, as well as mentally taking note of who seemed to be understanding the topic, who needed additional explanations or assistance, and just generally where everyone stood in terms of learning the topic at hand. Then during my prep or during something where the students were self-sufficient like silent reading, I would spend a few minutes looking over the students’ work. In considering both whatever product students produced, as well as my observations during the lesson itself, I would make note of how the lesson seemed to have gone. Did the class as a whole seem to understand the topic I was teaching? Do I need to recap anything to the entire class before I move on to something else, or should I take aside a smaller group and go over it again with just them? Are we ready to move on to the next step during the next lesson, or do students need more time to finish what we were doing today? Everything from the lesson would be taken into consideration for planning the next day’s lesson, and I would keep an unofficial log of how each student seemed to be doing at the topic, so I could follow the progression of their learning and know who might need me to focus on them more during each lesson and who might need something additional to be challenged with.
As I said, I taught both all of both the geometry and water cycle units. In teaching sequential lessons, I needed to know how well my students understood the previous lesson. Are we ready to move on to 3D shapes, or do we need more practice first with the attributes of 2D shapes before we add in a new concept? I liked this casual level of formative assessment—it was low stakes for the students as they knew they didn’t have to do perfectly, just demonstrate their learning to the best of their abilities, and made little extra work for myself in keeping track of how the students were doing in their learning of a particular topic. Spending five to ten minutes per subject during prep time to make sure what you’ll be teaching the next day is reasonable and shouldn’t lead to overwhelming yourself, at least in my opinion. Typically, my practicum class had math, language arts, and either science or social studies in one day (some days gym and/or music cut out one of these subjects). When teaching my own class and using this model, I could spend about half an hour either during any downtime of the day or before leaving for home after school looking and thinking over how my students are understanding the topics taught during the day, and that would be enough for me to know where to start with my lessons the next day.
This low-stakes, progress-based form of assessment is one that I really liked. If I were to teach in an intermediate level class in the future, this method would most likely have to be tweaked to work with higher level material, but, for grade 2s and what they learn, I think it works really well.
Assessment Resources:
Transforming Assessment – BC’s New Curriculum
https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/node/88
BC’s K-12 Assessment System – BC’s New Curriculum
https://curriculum.gov.bc.ca/assessment
Dylan Wiliam – YouTube – Assessment for Learning
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiu-jY-xaPg
Dylan Wiliam – YouTube – Assessment Strategies
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcJdZGz6ifY
Dylan Wiliam – YouTube – Formative Assessment
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYdVe5O7KBE
Assessment: The Bridge Between Teaching and Learning – from Voices in the Middle, Volume 21, Number 2, December 2013
https://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/VM/0212-dec2013/VM0212Assessment.pdf