Formative and Authentic Assessment

Instead giving counterproductive, high-stakes exams, David Jaffee promotes formative and authentic assessment methods.

Formative assessment happens during learning, usually in the classroom. Students do something, like an assignment, and get immediate feedback on what they did. A teacher walking around from student to student or group to group, following what the students are doing and helping students identify which concepts they’re not getting, is a typical example of formative assessment.

Authentic assessments are assignments that are or mimic real-world problems, and require students to apply the stuff they should have learned to solving them. I’m using projects like the draining of a bottle and carpet friction experiments to assess if my students truly understand why they do algebra and calculus, and are able to apply the techniques they’ve learned.

Caveat: It is important to note, however, that being able to solve real-world problems requires some abstract thinking skills that adolescents are still developing. Yet, even though a lot of the basic learning in middle and high school consists of ingesting the language of the different fields of study — they type of thing that is easy to test — a more useful assessment is likely to be one that requires students to use their new vocabulary in written assignments, such as project reports and essays.

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