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Bethany Crocker
February 14, 2014
EPS 513
Formative Assessment Final Paper


I decided to focus on the content knowledge and skills my kindergarten students were
obtaining during our work word phonics activities. I analyzed whether students were achieving
the lesson objectives and identified if there were any misconceptions related to the both the
content and the presentation of the formative assessment. I collected data from three different
formative assessments.
I collected this data from digraph and blend phonics word work lessons during the
months of January and February. The first lesson objective was to recognize the ch digraph at the
beginning, middle and end of a word. After a whole group lesson on this topic, the students
completed a response sheet during which I read aloud the word and the students checked one of
three boxes to show that the ch sound was either at the beginning, middle or end of the word.
The second lesson objective was to differentiate between the ch and sh digraph. After a brief
review of the ch and sh digraph sounds, students completed a cut and paste sort. They placed
pictures of words that started with ch under the letters ch and pictures that start with sh under the
letters ch. The third lesson objective was to differentiate between the blend bl and the sound b
at the beginning of a word. After a whole group lesson on the topic, students were asked to
number a paper from one to five, and then write bl or b after I read the words aloud.
All three of these assessments had strengths and weaknesses. The ch beginning, middle
and end assessment was very clear. Students understood what to do. The assessment was also
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very quick. However, one weakness of the assessment was that there was only one choice for
identifying ch in middle of the word, and this word was a compound word. Because I read aloud
the word and students had a visual of the word, it was a beneficial assessment for visual and
auditory learners.
The second assessment was a cut and paste sort. Students identified which pictures
belonged under the ch column, and which belonged under the sh column. This assessment was
an activity that the students have learned how to do. They are accustomed to the routine of
cutting, gluing and sorting pictures. However, the assessment can sometimes be confusing.
Although we go over each picture beforehand, students do forget what the pictures represent
during these sorting activities. Also, the sort contained a total of 16 pictures, which is too large a
number. Sorting this many pictures is not necessary for students to show understanding of the
concept.
During the third student assessment, students were asked to number their papers from one
to five, and then listen as I read five words that started with either bl or b. They wrote the
beginning sound of the word next to the number. The strength of this assessment was that it was
short and very similar to the learning activity we did. During this lesson, the students listened for
the beginning sounds of bl and b words, then wrote either bl or b on whiteboards. It was
also a very quick exit ticket at the end of the lesson. Some weaknesses were that the students do
not have much experience numbering papers on their own, so this was challenging for some
students. I had to stop to re-explain what to do during this part of the assessment. Also, some
students wrote the entire word, instead of just the beginning sound. This tells me that the
directions were not entirely clear.
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Summative assessments are given eight times during the year. Students are asked to
identify the beginning, middle and ending sounds of words, among many other phonics and
literacy skills. Formative assessments prepare students for these progress report and report card
assessments. All of the formative assessments are similar to assessments students have
completed previously, though there is no one way that we always assess word work activities.
Cut and paste sorts very common, but not exclusive. It is good to expose students to a variety of
ways to show their learning. However, routines are very important, especially in kindergarten.
Because the overall data showed that a majority of students understood the content and
directions for the assessments, I believe that all of these assessments were valid ways to check
that students have mastered the objective. After reflecting, however, I do not believe that any of
them were the best way that students could be assessed. Summative assessments are given eight
times during the year. Students are asked to identify the beginning, middle and ending sounds of
words, among many other phonics and literacy skills.
The Ch digraph beginning, middle and end assessment included twenty students. Out of
twenty students, only two students answered all nine questions correctly. However, nine students
answered eight out of nine correctly. All of these eight students only missed the word
wheelchair, which was the only word with the ch digraph in the middle of the word. It was also
the only compound word in the group. This shows me that these students understood the concept,
but found that question confusing, or did not understand how to identify the middle sound. The
bar graph that I chose to represent student data shows me very clearly who understood the
content and who did not. One weakness with this graph is that it does not separate data into the
beginning, middle and ending sounds. I still have to sort through my students exit tickets in
order to find this specific data.
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The data workshops in class helped me understand that the choice for assessment could
have been improved if the exit ticket included more than one middle digraph word. This would
have been a more valid way to assess my objective, which included identifying middle ch sounds
in words. Through discussion with my colleagues, I was encouraged to make my own exit ticket
next time, instead of using a pre-made assessment.
For the second assessment, I used a similar graph. I can see clearly that out of nineteen
students, eleven of them scored 14 or higher out of 16. I also could not see the specific answers
on this graph. One thing that the graph could not tell me if which pictures were challenging for
many students. For instance, if many students got one picture wrong, it would tell me that the
picture was probably confusing.
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During the data workshop, my colleagues gave feedback about the graph. They thought it
was very clear and an accurate depiction of the assessment. I learned that when describing my
objective to other teachers, it was useful to have student work to clarify meaning. However, I
need to continue to think through ways I can show data without having to physically show
student work to other teachers.
Eleven out of sixteen students missed one or zero answers on the last exit ticket. This exit
ticket only contained five questions. This bar graph has a similar format to the other graphs. I can
clearly see how many students took this assessment and how many answers they got correct.
This shows me that most of my class understands this concept. However, like the other
assessments, I did not show if students identified bl more times than they identified b
overall. I have to search through the exit tickets to find this information. I did learn from the
previous assessment. I chose to make the assessment only five questions to ensure that incorrect
answers were not caused by lack of stamina. During the data protocol in class, I was able to see
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that my graph would have been more beneficial if I included informative about specific students.
This way, I can tell who needs more lessons on this topic right away.

J.W. scored and 8/9 on the first assessment, a 14/16 on the second assessment, and 5/5 on
the last assessment. I chose to focus on her scores because I think that this data shows that the
although J.W. understood the content in all three lessons, the third assessment, which was a
quicker lesson and closely aligned to the learning activity, was, perhaps, a more valid assessment
of her knowledge. She did miss the middle ch wheelchair question, and only missed one pair of
sorting pictures. The pictures of children and a shamrock could have been easily confused for
another word. In my data representations, there is no way to see J.W.s score clearly. This made
me wonder how I could represent date from three similar exit tickets in one graph that includes
each students progression. This would probably be a more beneficial graph as I seek to identify
trends in my students mastery of content.
In Shepards article, Linking Formative Assessment to Scaffolding, she states that
formative assessment- like scaffolding- is a collaborative process and involves negotiation of
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meaning between teacher and learner about expectations and how best to improve performance
(p. 67). As I think about how I have improved my formative assessment throughout the weeks, I
realize that have not given effective feedback. The process of formative assessment in my
kindergarten classroom is not collaborative. However, I have noticed student growth. Most of the
students have followed the trajectory of mastering digraphs first, and then blends. I have also
identified gaps between some students current status in learning and the desired educational
goal.
Through examination of these assessments and reflection on the main concepts learned
throughout this class, I have gained understanding of my students knowledge, but I have also
gained many different insights about how to further reflect upon and improve formative
assessments in the future. One way that I used student data to improve my formative assessment
was thinking about how long it took the learner to complete. I also improved this particular
assessment by changing the format. I decided to have students write the letters of the blend,
which was a simple way to assess my objective. I decided to make these changes based on my
colleagues suggestions and personal reflection during our data workshops.
In the article Formative Assessment: What Do Teachers Need to Know and Do? Margaret
Heritage reiterates that the essential purpose of formative assessmentthe means to identify
the gap between a students current status in learning and some desired educational goal (p.
141). Through my analysis of three different sets of data, I was able to identify how many
students missed a majority of the questions in all my assessments. Through further investigation
of the exit tickets, I was able to identify which students need further work with digraphs and
blends during small group interventions. Because more than half of my students mastered the
learning objective in all three exit tickets, I continued with instruction on the next content area.
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included review of the ch and sh digraphs during short periods of time in my word work lessons,
however, I did not formally re-teach the concepts. A higher percentage of students missed one or
zero questions on the last assessment. However, because the assessments were not all in the same
format, I cannot compare them with one hundred percent accuracy.
I am interested to see if some of the students who did not perform well on these
assessments would be able to show understanding through a different format. I am going to
revise the format of the digraph assessments and give them during a small group lesson. If
students still do not show understanding, it will let me know that they need specific re-teaching
of digraphs and blends. Most of my students who missed many questions on these exit tickets
have not mastered all of their letter sounds, and may not be ready to tackle the concepts of
digraphs and blends just yet.
The biggest question I still have about my student data is how to appropriately give
specific feedback to kindergarten students who cannot read comments I put on their paper. After
further reflection, I think that I can give more specific feedback on what students can work on in
a small group setting. If there are students who need more intervention, it might also be
appropriate to meet with those students one-on-one. I do not think that it is manageable to meet
with all twenty two of my students this way. According to Hattie and Timperly, feedback has the
most impact when goals are specific and challenging but task complexity is low (p. 86).
This is encouraging as a kindergarten teacher, because it means that my feedback does not have
to discuss issues that are way above my students' heads. Instead, if I give them specific feedback
that is challenging for them, but easy to implement, my students can benefit from my feedback.
Overall, this is the most pressing concern I have about the way I give formative assessments. So
many articles and discussions we had in this class mentioned the importance of feedback. I
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would like to create a system of timely, targeted and age appropriate feedback for my
kindergarten students.
















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References
Hattie, J. and Timperley, H. The Power of Feedback. Review of Educational Research. Vol. 77.
No. 1. p. 81-112. 2007.
Heritage, M. Formative Assessment: What do Teachers Need to Know and Do? Phi Delta
Kappan, p. 140-145, 2007.
Shepard, L. Linking Formative Assessment to Scaffolding. Educational Leadership. p. 66-70.
2005.