When I first began teaching, I remember there was a lot of discussion about formative and summative assessments. There can be confusion on where some assignments fall or we often make choices during the class period that can change from formative to summative and back again! I wanted to share how I think about formative and summative assessments to provide for sure definitions and/or a refresher for you – as I’ve found that being sure in my definitions has made me a much better teacher overall.
Table of Contents
“Assessment”
First off, it can be intimidating that both formative and summative assignments are referred to as assessments. However, I always have the mindset that all work is assessing skills – whether it be practice and skill development or tracking where students are at in regards to learning targets and standards. I always consider that the work that students are doing is providing feedback to me to know where I need to go next within the unit – if students understand, I continue. If they don’t, then we need to revisit some concepts to ensure that students are going to be successful when it comes to the end of the unit.
Formative Assessments
Formative assessments are assignments that are like check-ins. They give you, the teacher, information about how students are doing towards meeting the learning goal or standard. Formative assessments are the practicing of the skill – think daily work, what you observe during lessons, entry and exit tickets, along with TONS of other examples – check out this list of 60 different formative assessments from CareerTech.
A way that I think about formative assessments are that if it isn’t a big assignment where students are showing that they have developed a skill or can meet a standard after we’ve already learned it, then it is a formative assessment.
“Formative assessments are critical in helping teachers uncover strengths and next steps for each student to power individual, small group, and whole class instruction.” – Jennifer Serravallo in Education Week Teacher
Summative Assessments
Summative assessments are the assignments where you want to see how well students are reaching the standard. These are the tests and projects, where all the learning comes together to demonstrate understanding.
If you’re looking for some ideas of summative assessments (other than a basic test), check out my post about alternative assessments!
Using Formative and Summative Assessments
At the end of the day, you use both forms of assessment: formative and summative. When creating your units and lessons, you will have a lot of formative assessments throughout to make sure that students are picking up what they need. Formative assessments are the assessments we use every day, multiple times, to see how well learning is going. Summative assessments are where we see it all put together and how well students are meeting the standards. One of my favorite ways to think about formative and summative assessments are to think of formative as the practices for the game (Summative).
“When the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative; when the guests taste the soup, that’s summative.” – Robert E. Stake
In the two districts that I’ve taught in, there’s been a lot of focus on formative and summative assessments because of our grading breakdown. Summative grades have a higher impact on grade than formative grades. However, you have less summative grades in the gradebook too.
Understanding the differences between formative and summative assessments truly impacted me as a teacher, made me really think about my unit development, and the work that I assign to students.
