Blog Entry IX: Assessment

Formative assessment is a very powerful and useful strategy used by teachers in the classroom. For a reminder on what formative assessment is, it is a procedure that conducted by teachers during the learning process of a topic. By using this kind of assessment teachers can gather information about student learning and can modify their teaching and their learning activities to help students learn during the learning process. This is completely different compared summative assessments. Summative assessments are often focused on educational outcomes, such as an end of a unit exam. There are a wide range of ways to use formative assessments in the classroom. Examples include: exit slips, homework for a lesson that was covered in class for that day, reflection journals, 3.2.1s (3 things I learned today, 2 things I found interesting, 1 question I still have),  group discussions, self assessments. This pdf created by Natalie Regier provides readers with 60 examples of formative assessment.  
Creating assessments for your classroom is not an easy process. Creating quality assessments may take some time. How reliable is your assessment? Is it consistent? How valid is your assessment? Is it measuring what it's supposed to be measuring? Since I don't really have any experience in the classroom, I cannot say what is more important between formative and summative assessments.  Despite me not being able to say which is more important, I think that when I am given the opportunity to teach I will focus on formative a lot more than summative. I say this because the consistent assessing of students will allow me to get to know my students better and help me create learning activities that they enjoy engaging with. This will help me become a better teacher faster. Measuring student growth helps them become better learners and they also learn that there is more to school than just letter grades from big tests. 
Today technology can play a role in formative assessments in the classrooms. Students enjoy using technology. I think that it's great anytime you can implement the use of technology into your instruction. In the topic video, Scott Kinkoph demonstrated the use of PearDeck and EduCanon. He used these programs to present and formally assess information to his students. What was great about the video is that all of his students were participating. This is something that you don't see too often classrooms. Getting students engaged is the key, and technology can  definitely help with that.  Last semester I had some experiences with Kahoot. For those of you that don't know, I'm that student that likes to sit in the back of classroom and try to keep away from classroom discussions. I found Kahoot to be quite entertaining and found myself always participating when it was being used. I look forward to finding more resources like Kahoot, Peardeck, and EduCanon in hopes that I can effectively use them in my classroom.