Assessments and Technology

Learning Activity

Formative Assessments 
Formative assessments are the building blocks to effective decision making in the classroom. It is essential for school leaders to promote meaningful, authentic, and timely formative assessments. Below you will learn about many different strategies for formative assessments and technology that can support them.

• Formative Assessment and Technology
• Empowering Teachers with Technology: Formative Assessment to Personalize Learning
• Access the Top Tools for Formative Assessment, presented by Common Sense Media

The resource video discusses how Summative and Formative Assessments can help build a rigorous program to help student achievement.

Read through these blogs to determine processes and gain further understanding of what a Summative Assessment might look like.

• Assessment Articles
• Types of summative assessment and formative assessment
• Explainer: what’s the difference between formative and summative assessment in schools?

The two assessment organizations that have built assessments connected to the National Common Core Standards are SBAC and PARCC, listed below. Review some of the sample tasks and items from each organization.

• Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium Sample items and performance tasks ()
• Partnership for Assessment of Readiness of Colleges and Careers Item and Task Prototypes ()

For this activity, reflect on your experiences with formative and summative assessments. 

In at least four sentences, respond to two of the following: 

• How can you create a discussion with educators on technology and formative assessments to inform learning?   
• How do you use multiple forms of assessment including diagnostic, formative and 
  summative to plan instruction and inform your work? 
  What formative assessments do you use most often to identify student needs and to plan your instruction? 
• Before you design your instruction, do you consider what you want the students to know and how you will assess it? Explain your process. 
• Explain how you clarify expectations for students by using: Exemplary student work; Rubrics; Explicit directions; Modelling; and Student repetition of details. 
• How do you benchmark your assessments with other teachers at your level to inform your expectations and ensure high expectations for all students? 

Resources

https://youtu.be/mvQMfPZNre4