It is about the learning or the score?

WHAT DO YOU THINK, HUH? 

What are you interested in? At the time of assess your students, what is more important?

This is one of the most conrtoversial questions a teacher could be asked to answer. Most of the teachers claim that every student is important, equal and taken as all  the others in the group. But I have felt the difference between those teachers who really care about our learning process, knowledge, opinions, points of view, etc: and the others who just focus on a score and a face. 

What kind of teachers are we? Can we forget about the subjectivity and just be objective? Or can we make a balance between both?

 Assessment affects decisions about grades, placement, advancement, instructional needs, curriculum, and, in some cases, funding. Assessment inspires us to ask these hard questions: "Are we teaching what we think we are teaching?" "Are students learning what they are supposed to be learning?" "Is there a way to teach the subject better, thereby promoting better learning?”

Sometimes we think we are using the right methodology and don't think about students learning, we don't make questions, like: Are they learning? Am I doing it right? What else do they need to comprehend what I want them to learn?

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT

I wanted to write my conception about Formative Assessment, its uses and the benefits for students and teachers when using it in their classrooms. First of all, you are going to find some theories that show what Formative Assessments is, then I wrote my own concept taking some of those beliefes and finally I talk about our reality in the classrooms. 
Have a look at it, and enjoy it giving your opinions and comments. 

FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT

According to Brown (2000) Assessment is an ongoing process aimed at understanding and improving student learning. It involves making our expectations explicit and public; setting appropriate criteria and high standards for learning quality; systematically gathering, analyzing, and interpreting evidence to determine how well performance matches those expectations and standards, using the resulting information to document, explain, and improve performance. 
Assessment for Learning focuses on the opportunities to develop students' ability to evaluate them, to make judgments about their own performance and improve upon it. It makes use of authentic assessment methods and offers lots of opportunities for students to develop their skills.
Black and William (1998) defined formative assessment as “all those activities undertaken by teachers, and/or by their students, which provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged” (p.10). 
According to Brown (2000) “formative assessment is evaluating students in the process of ‘forming’ their competencies and skills with the goal of helping them to continue that growth process.”

But, what Formative Assessment is for me? 
 According to all those theories and the knowledge we have acquired during the Assessment course, I can make my own concept for Formative Assessment:  It is one of the ways of evluating students in the classroom but focused not only on what students can produce in a paper; like tests, quices and answer questions, but on the informal process used by teachers and students to recognise and respond to student learning in order to help estudents to identify their weaknesses and strenghts to enhance that learning. Formative assessment also provides useful tools during the learning process in order to modify teaching and learning activities to improve student attainment.

Having stated what Formative Assessment is, I dare to say that in our real educational context, few teachers use formative assessment as their way to assess students. What would be the reasons for avoiding it? What makes Formative Assessment so complicated to use it in the classroom?

Let's see some examples in a real context.

When there is lack of Formative Assessment in the classroom: 

• Most of the time, the teacher does not provide accurate feedback what discourage students to continue with their learning process.
• Students need extra guidance during the development of the activities because they feel lost, since there are no clear instructions and purposes.
• Teacher just gives instructions but doesn't follow students proccess. 
• Students don't receive feedback, they just hear the teacher telling them what to do, what not to do and some corrections

When Formative Assessment is used in the classroom:

• Teacher give clear instructions and purposes to develop the activities, what make students to feel confident about what they are doing. 
• Teacher doesn't just give instructions, but guides the whole process of the activities that are being done;  giving suggestions, answering questions and solving doubts.
• Teacher tries to have students perform more activities where they can realize how to use certain topics they've learned in a real context; rather than having them memorize and translate structures. Thus, students would get more motivated and involved with the tasks, since they would feel more active in their process.
• Teacher motivates students to learn and take responsibility for their own learning; so that, they can become users of assessment alongside the teacher.
• After correcting the mistakes, teacher gives a strategy in order to avoid making them, and provides more examples so students understand how to use it well, instead of just repeating the rules.                      

Having given some examples of Formative Assessment in the classroom, I need to highlight the importance of feedback during this proccess.  

According to Brokhart (1997) the teaching and learning process requires continuous evaluation, which is suggested to take into account the purposes of formative assessment, understood as an evaluation focused on the effective and continuous feedback from the teacher, in which the teacher gets information for the purpose of generating greater interest and motivation in students to learn. 

is used to enhance learning (McMillan, 2007).

 Therefore it is important that every teacher looks for the best way to give feedback to their students helping them to realize the aspects they have to work most on when developing the activities. It also keeps them motivated to have a stretched relationship with the teacher so that there is no fear to be corrected.

I can finally say that it is important that students receive developmental feedback on all possible occasions, because it helps to internalize their learning process in a better way in which they make aware of their strengths and weaknesses.

References

Brown, H.D. (2000). Principles of language learning and teaching. (4ed.). New York: Pearson ESL

Black, P. y Wiliam, D. (1998). Inside the black box: Raising standards through classroom assessment. Phi Delta Kappan, 80 (2), 139-148.

McMillan, J. H. (2001). Classroom assessment: Principles and practice for effective instruction (2a ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.