Top 5 Teaching Best Practices - Assessment & Feedback

Formative Assessment & Intentional Feedback

Written By: Alyssa Scheidel

A couple of big educational catch phrases right now are learning purpose and success criteria. Teachers tell their students at the beginning of each lesson what the learning purpose is and what their success criteria looks like. As teachers, we find ourselves explaining the “why” behind what we are teaching and expect that our students can tell someone what they are learning and why (if we want to be a highly effective teacher).

If we want to reach the point of having our students use the success criteria for improvement (per the 5D teacher evaluation system), then we need to design formative assessments which provide comprehensive information about students' thinking and needs.

What is Classroom Formative Assessment & Intentional Feedback?

Classroom formative assessment refers to a variety of tools and approaches to gather comprehensive and quality information about students as individuals and a class as a whole. There are lots of ways to formatively assess your students, and that is what makes it so fun! As teachers, we have the ability to be creative and switch things up for our students. From Edutopia’s 7 Smart, Fast Ways to Do Formative Assessment, my favorite is exit tickets.

Exit tickets not only allow the teacher to quickly gather data on which students “got it” and which ones did not, but also allows students to easily self-assess themselves.

Intentional feedback is critical in all classrooms. Feedback allows for relationship building, student self-assessment, and student growth and achievement. Intentional feedback could look like a quick 1:1 meeting, meeting in small groups, written feedback, typed feedback, or even video feedback. When students receive intentional feedback they are able to feel loved, make corrections, self-monitor, and determine their next goal.

Why Emphasize Formative Assessment & Intentional Feedback in a Blended Classroom?

Where do I begin? There are several reasons why it’s important to emphasize formative assessment and intentional feedback in a blended classroom. As a teacher, you commit to the job of helping your students move from point A to point B. The interesting thing, especially in today’s world, is that all students point A’s and B’s are different. So now we have an extra big job. We not only need to move all of our students from their personal point A to point B, but we have to create individualized plans for students and/or small groups. This is why formative assessment (and keeping track of that data) is so important. It will help us stay focused on each and every one of those goals.

Intentional Feedback ties right into that. Students thrive off knowing their goals and striving to reach toward those goals. Teachers and students need to work as a team to communicate about where they are at and where they are heading. Without intentional feedback, students will not feel connected to their education and therefore, could lose purpose in what they are doing.

Implementation at Rockford Public Schools

Rockford Public Schools has recently begun the steps to become a PLC district. A PLC is a professional learning community. In a professional learning community, teachers and other teacher leaders work together to create plans and learning environments where all students can reach their fullest potential. A recent ISTE blog post gives 4 Benefits of implementing an Active Professional Learning Community.

1. PLCs allow educators opportunities to directly improve teaching and learning.

2. PLCs build stronger relationships between team members.

3. PLCs help teachers stay on top of new research and emerging technology tools for the classroom.

4. PLCs help teachers reflect on ideas.

RPS dipped their toes into the PLC process over the 2020-2021 school year, even in the midst of the Covid-19 Pandemic. Teaching grade level teams at each school worked together on a collaboration cycle where we focused on a few key questions:

1. What do we expect our students to learn?

2. How will we know if they learned it?

3. What do we do if they didn’t learn it?

4. How do we extend the learning once they do learn it?

This is only the beginning to this robust PLC process, but I am glad we were able to come together in a tough year and begin our thinking.