Teaching Through The Arts

In our attempt to give concrete examples of formative assessment techniques, we go back to Debra Dirksen's 2011 article "Hitting the Reset Button: Using Formative Assessment to Guide Instruction" where she discusses weekly summaries. She discusses having students "complete longer writing assignments in which I ask them to write a weekly summary reflecting on what they've learned from class discussion, activities, and reading during the week. To prompt reflection on personal learning , I ask students to respond to the question: What did you learn personally from class discussion, activities, and readings conducted this week? For evaluation , I ask, "How do you think what was taught this week, in class and through your readings, will work in the real world?" And finally, for transformation , I ask, "How will you personally use the information?" This is an opportunity for students to engage with the material and discover what resonates with the...

Ever have a problem differentiating between the definitions of formative and summative assessments? Well thanks to Debra Dirksen in her article "Hitting the Reset Button: Using Formative Assessments to Guide Instruction," she offers the following image from the work of Robert Stake (Scriven 1991:169):  "When the cook tastes the soup, that's formative: When the guests taste the soup, that's summative."  "As the cook, or teacher, we need to stop and taste the soup before we move forward with instruction. We need to design instruction so students can press the reset button and go back to learn what they missed the first time. We can use many techniques to assess student achievement and understanding." This is a powerful image that clearly delineates between the two concepts and helps to cement them into the mind. It's also reminds us of the power of using metaphors, similes, images and figurative language in our teaching practices.

Many of us know the theory behind formative assessments, but the burning question may be how do we use them in our every day teaching practices? In her article "Hitting the Reset Button: Using Formative Assessment to Guide Instruction" published in the Phi Delta Kappan (2011) Debra J. Dirksen gives numerous practical applications on how to implement FAs in the classroom. Here's a couple using quick writes: "We can also use short writing assignments to check for understanding. One example is called "3, 2, 1." Students write three things about concept A, two things about concept B, and one thing that connects concepts A and B. A similar activity is called "Circle, Square, Triangle." After giving a presentation or engaging students in a learning activity, I have students describe three metaphorical ideas by responding to the following questions: 1. What's still going around in your head? In other words, what do you still not quite understand...