Formative assessments are completed while students are still learning. Formative assessments check for understanding while the students are learning in order to help teachers discover whether their lessons are beneficial. The intended purpose for these assessments, which come in many, many forms, is to increase students’ learning while they are in fact, learning the content. (Examples for formative assessments include Non-graded quizzes, pretests, minute papers, exit tickets, written assignments, concept maps, interviews, progress monitoring, performance assessment scoring guides, weekly reports, focused questions, journals, learning logs, learning probes, checklists, and surveys. (Riedemann, n.d.) Some tools for performing formative assessments are websites like Socrative, Formative, Kahoot, Quizziz, and Quizlet Live; SMART Lab, Nearpod, Viza, Edpuzzle, and list could go on and on.
An example of a formative assessment would be a simple check for understanding while in the midst of a lesson. The teacher might say, “Can everyone give me a thumbs up if you understand what we are doing?” From this, the teacher would be able to quickly see which students are grasping the ideas and which students are struggling. He/she could make a note of the students who are not following along, and meet with them later to reteach.
This assessment is for learning because it is helping the teacher know what to do next. The results from these formative assessments are going to help aid the teacher in future instruction and activities.
Advantages/Disadvantages
Advantages: These assessments are very beneficial because the let the teacher know if their students are "getting it" or understanding the concepts of the lesson.
Disadvantages: I cannot think of many disadvantages to formative assessments. Like I have mentioned in a few of the other assessments, if this type of assessment is given improperly a teacher could come to the wrong conclusion about a student's ability.