Question

How will you implement formative assessment in your classroom to support the Common Core State Standards and the ongoing, formative assessment of ELL students?

Answer 1

• Formative assessment is a deliberate process used by teachers and students during instruction that provides actionable feedback used to adjust ongoing teaching and learning strategies to improve students' attainment of curricular learning targets/goals.
• The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) represent a coherent progression of learning expectations in English language arts and mathematics designed to prepare K–12 students for college and career success.
• The standards define the knowledge and skills students should have in their K–12 education, emphasize learning goals, describe end-of-year expectations, and focus on results, leaving room for teachers to determine how these learning goals should be achieved.
• These five core strategies map nicely to the Common Core State Standards (systemic reform) while impacting the classroom on a daily basis at the student level (classroom reform).
• 1. Clarifying, sharing, and understanding learning targets and success criteria-The students need to know what they are being taught, and what the measurements for success are, so setting expectations is crucial.
• 2. Engineering effective classroom discussions, questions, and learning tasks that elicit evidence of learning-
• 3. Providing feedback that moves learners forward-More than a grade, the feedback needs to be instructive and come not only from teachers but fellow students.
• 4. Activating students as the owners of their own learning
• 5. Activating students as instructional resources for one another- Collaboration among students is just as important as collaboration among teachers in improving student learning.
• In my classroom, I would use evidence of the students’ oral language and written language to provide documentation for the levels of students’ reading and listening skills.
• Through their speaking output and written work, I can determine whether they were able to comprehend the instructions, story, or task. That evidence tells me how well students were able to take ideas and put them into their own words after a listening activity or a reading experience.
• When students are able to state a position or an opinion and provide evidence to back it up, I can better understand their comprehension levels. And getting students to provide evidence for their opinions and arguments, along with engaging with more complex texts, are among key components of the new literacy shifts in the Common Core State Standards.
• So, if my students are unable to understand what they listen to, read, or discuss, then I need to take a step back and reassess my own teaching in light of the students’ level of language development.
• Using formative assessment gives teachers a better understanding of their students’ language and content understanding that is not provided by standardized summative assessments, which typically can’t account for the language proficiency level an English language learner (ELL) has or the quality of his or her content instruction
• As part of formative assessment practices, classroom teachers should consider using the following strategies to gauge their students’ progress in both content and language:
• Observations of student language usage in speaking and writing
• Use of visuals to represent conceptual understanding
• Questioning: What types of questions do students ask about content and how they use language?
• Observation checklists
• Student demonstrations
• Student participation in critical dialogues or conversations
• Student interviews
• Student work samples
• Student self-reflections
• Games: Can they participate in classroom games, and how much language or visual support do they need to participate?
• Formative assessment is not a test, nor an instrument, but rather an approach to teaching and learning that uses feedback as its centerpiece in a supportive classroom context.
• Providing feedback and redirection to students is the best type of tool teachers have in helping English language learners advance their literacy development to meet the Common Core literacy demands—by giving teachers opportunities to help students access the academic content in the classroom