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Glorya Suk
EPS 513 - Shaunti & Dianne

Formative Assessment Final Paper
The student learning question that surrounded my focus for this formative assessment
assignment was content knowledge and skill. The reason I chose content knowledge and skill
was because my fourth grade class revealed little content knowledge from their previous grade
levels. In the beginning of the new school year, majority of my students were struggling to do
basic multiplication problems. Many of them were still counting on their fingers for questions
like 2 x 4. Furthermore, when we asked them if they had ever seen a mathematical method from
a lesson we were prepared to teach, they answered no. It was after that unexpected response
from the students that my mentor, co-resident and I decided we needed to take a couple steps
back from what we were hoping to start in order to set the foundation the students needed. We
needed to go back to the basics because the students cannot succeed in the upcoming contents if
their basic mathematics foundation is not stable. It would have been foolish of us to carry on
simply hoping they would grasp the concepts as we trucked forward. Mathematics was not the
only subject my students struggled in. They struggled in writing and reading. I decided to use
writing to conduct the formative assessment assignment. Writing was one subject I was able to
easily monitor and assess the students on their content knowledge. The focused lessons for this
formative assessment was in grammar -- identifying complete and incomplete sentences using
subject and predicates.
One of the norms in the classroom is beginning the lesson with a do now slip at the start
of the every lesson. The students know to expect a do now task at the beginning of the lesson.
The do now slips we assign our student to complete are either review from the lesson they
learned the day before or a preview to what they are going to learn that day. After they have
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completed the do now task, we go over the answer, or ideas, together as a class. Reviewing the
do now slips allows the students to evaluate for themselves whether or not they were on the right
track or completely left field. Going over the do now also tells the student that what they are
doing is not useless or has no purpose. What they wrote on their do now slip will be looked at
and most likely discussed over with the class. There is urgency and purpose to the routine of the
do now tasks. The expectation is set for the students and it is followed through in the end with
discussion and participation. Students would not take any assignment or assessment seriously if
they know that it will never be looked at or will be used for anything. One daily routine we
involve in our classroom throughout the day is student-to-student collaboration and discussion,
or as AUSL calls it -- Turn and Talk. We allow the time for students to share with their peer
questions they might have or ideas that come up about what we are learning. It gives the students
the opportunity to share with each other and hear from one another instead of having the teacher
do all the talking and teaching.
The tasks and assignments I used for my formative assessment data are different from the
usual assessments the students are used to taking. For one, I did not tell them that I was going
take these assessments as an official grade for the grade books. When my students hear the word
assessment or test, they quickly go into panic mode and freeze. Many of them even think too
deeply into a simply question because it is a test and simple answers are assumed to be
incorrect because tests cant be that simple. Im sure that if i told them their exit slip was going
to be used for assessment data, my students would not have answered in the same way. They
would overthink and stress over a simple task of just answering it the best they can. Since we just
started this unit, I was not able to include the overall unit assessment for grammar.
The data I used for this assignment were 3 different forms of assessment in writing, more
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specifically, grammar: Do Now Slip, Exit Slip, and a homework sheet they were assigned to
complete at home and bring back. The do now assessment required students to classify whether
or not The blue house. as a complete or incomplete sentence. Then the students had to explain
why the sentence is complete or incomplete. I assessed the students on whether or not they were
able to do 2 things: 1. identify whether or not it was a complete sentence and 2. explain why it
was complete or incomplete. I wanted to see what the students know about sentences before
diving into the lesson. If they all knew what made a sentence complete or a fragment, then I
would have altered my lesson to something more challenging instead of introductory. My second
assessment data I collected was an exit slip at the end of the same lesson. I wanted to use this
data to show whether the lesson helped the students realize more what makes a complete
sentence or an incomplete sentence. The third data source I used was the homework they were
assigned to complete at home on their own. They were expected to identify whether the sentence
was complete or incomplete. If the sentence was incomplete. they had to write down what is
missing from the sentence to make it complete.
The above data shows the results for the Do Now slip the students were expected to
participate in before the start of the lesson. An important factor about this data is that this do now
task was conducted before the students started the new unit. I wanted to assign this task for them
to see where they start before the lesson and how they perform after learning the lesson. So the
data showed that more than half the students did not answer correctly whereas only 5 students
out of 27 had background knowledge or remembered this lesson from their previous grade levels.
This data revealed that this lesson was necessary for the students to learn because more than half
the class did not know how to identify a complete or incomplete sentence. They were also
unfamiliar with or could not remember what a subject or predicate was prior to the lesson. The
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data results were formative for me because it allowed me to gauge where the student will be at
the end of the lesson/unit. The representation of this assessment helped my understanding of my
students learning and performance in the Grammar knowledge and skill by showing me the
range of what my students need to learn or review. The data workshops contributed to my
understanding to my students learning through the feedback my group and I discussed. They
mentioned that this data representation was helpful for a general idea of where the class is, but it
might be more helpful to use multiple data representations for the same assessment. For example,
using a pie chart to represent how many students got question 1 right, how much students
answered question 2 correctly, and so on. If I represented the data in that form, I can see where I
need to focus more attention on based on how many students answered incorrectly.
The data representation shown above was taken on the same day as the do now
assessment. It was conducted after the lesson for the do now was taught to see how well the
students understood the concept. I set up this assessment to get a gauge of how many have
learned from not knowing the concepts earlier. The exit slip task was answering why is this not
a complete sentence? Explain. for the sentence: "In the red house." The purpose of this form of
assessment was to determine whether or not the students were able to 1. identify whether or not it
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was a complete sentence and 2. being able to explain why it is a complete sentence using
vocabulary terms such as subject and predicate. I decided not to go with the individual student
assessment because my main focus for this assessment was to see whether the whole class was
able to grasp the concept of complete and fragment sentences. Whole group would have given
me more information as a whole group to determine whether the lesson was because of my
academic language and teaching strategies or if it was something a specific student
misunderstood about an idea. I have presented data that focused on specific students in other data
assessments, but especially for the exit ticket, it was more efficient to collect it as general data.
The data shown above represents the students individually instead of whole grouped, as it
was represented in the previous data representations. The reason I chose to represent the data
with individual students and their results through a bar graph was to be able to visually see where
students stand based on the answers they provided on their individual homework. This data was
very formative for me because I know that I want all my students to have scored above 75.
Drawing a line at the 75% mark will reveal students that are below that line. The information the
data provided was that more than half the students were able to independently complete the
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assignment with a 75% or higher. There were a couple students that struggled, but knowing those
students, I know that I need to either provide more resources for them or attend to them in a
small group during independent reading time to tackle on any misunderstandings or confusion
about complete and fragment sentences. The data below represents the same information but in
the form of a pie graph to see how much of the students are able to pass the assessment after the
lesson. It revealed that majority of the students were able to perform accurately on their
homework assignment.
What I have learned about the progression of my students learning was that after I taught
the lesson, their content knowledge was increased from their first assessment with the do now. It
went from only 5 students knowing the content to majority of the students passing the
assessments that test their knowledge base. The data workshops were helpful for me to
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understand my students learning because of their input and suggestions on how to represent the
data in different aspects to see both whole group and individual students academic process. For
example, they suggested that the way I represented the assessments of the whole class could be
one I represent through the individuals understanding of the lesson. One connection from the
article Formative Assessment: What do teachers need to know and do? was using and utilizing
one of the four core elements of formative assessment. Formative assessment is designed to
provide feedback at multiple levels. (142). The aspect of feedback gathered from formative
assessment was most helpful for me and mostly the main focus of my assessments. I needed the
immediate feedback on how my students are comprehending the lesson I teach them. Yes, it
would be helpful to have each students individual progress recorded and taken in as an
individual data, but with the time I was given on this lesson, the most efficient way to gauge
where I need to go with my lesson was to collect data of the class as a whole rather than
individually.
After collecting and analyzing data, a couple lingering questions and aspects I want to
investigate further is the format and nature of any assessment. When would be the most efficient
and necessary time to assess my students and use that data? I also wondering if everything we
expect the students to do are considered assessments if we are constantly evaluating their
comprehension and academic growth. I know that each teacher has their own class culture,
routine, and other requirements, but to use formative assessment should be universal, shouldnt
it? One skill I want to develop after all this is really analyzing and planning ahead after looking
over the data that was collected.

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