Some forms of formative assessment that take place in the classroom are exit slips, three minute papers (three minutes to write as much as they can about what was learned), and sentence summaries (answering who, what, when, why, and how). These are quick assessments that can be done at the end of class. Other types of assessment that can be done throughout the course of the unit are graphic organizers, and observing behaviors and discussions. Of course this isn’t an all inclusive list of formative assessment, just a couple of ideas to get familiarized with it. If used correctly, these can be used to enhance intrinsic motivation, that coming internally from the student without outside reward. Formative assessments are used to guide teachers in their teaching and allow students to understand what they know and don’t know. Formative assessments do not need to all be graded, because this can be very discouraging to students as they work their way through a unit (Tomlinson, C., 2013). When we grade everything it tends to create a type of atmosphere that says some are losers and some are winners and undermines the fact that all students are smart, they just might not excel in every area, and that’s okay (Tomlinson, C., 2013). Instead, I could take the time to sit with a student and sandwich the bad with the good, but focus mainly on the good. Students begin to see they are understanding some material, but may need to work on other concepts. This builds their self-worth instead of destroying them which grades can often do.
“Grades often reinforce a sense of hopelessness in struggling learners, motivate students with good grades to get more good grades rather than to learn, and appear irrelevant to students who have their own agendas” (Tomlinson, C., 2013, pg. 137). Formative assessment should be used to inform, not to necessarily give a final grade, so that is how we should teach our students to look at grades. To be informed by them, not to look at grades as failing or passing. I like the points system because of this, it shows you how many points you got, not the grade. I rarely put the percentage or a letter grade on the assignment (although I usually do for tests), because I don’t want students to think the grade is who they are. Some assignments, missing two points could make it seem like they got a “D” and that’s not who they are. They need to be taught that they are more than the grade though, that their worth does not come from the letter grade, but from who they are as a person, this is not a naturally learned concept in my mind.
Summative assessments are usually high point type of assignments that take place at the end of a unit in the form of a test or presentation. Summative assessments often come in the form of a written test. When this is done, students are oftentimes having to memorize a bunch of facts that they will most likely forget once they have turned in their test. There isn’t real learning occurring because their motivation isn’t to do well but to get an A on the test and move to the next topic, when we do this we are no longer teaching them how to think, we are teaching them how to memorize and that isn’t learning at all (Kohn, 2008). When I think of intrinsic motivation, I think of wanting to do well and learn the material, not just to get an A on the test, but to actually get something out of the unit. So how can summative assessments be intrinsically motivating? For students to get the value out of a summative assessment it is important to make it appeal to them. If students are doing something they are interested in and meaningful to them, in my experience, there is natural intrinsic motivation to do well (Lewin, L. & Shoemaker, B. J., 2011). I think for my students this would be the only way to enhance intrinsic motivation, because they are doing something that they will hopefully be proud of because they find it personally interesting. If it is a written test at the end of a unit as many summative tests are, one aspect I can think of to enhance intrinsic motivation is to put the amount of points a student got correct, rather than how many they missed. I usually do this on tests, but the other day I gave my seventh graders a quiz and put the amount of points they got right on the top without a percentage or a grade. It was no longer the I did horrible and hang my head in shame that so many of them generally do, it was I got this many points and they were excited, even if in reality they didn’t do that great, they couldn’t see a concrete grade. Easy ideas like this could make all the difference in a student’s life to give them encouragement to do better.
Intrinsic motivation in either summative or formative assessments comes from the teacher instilling in the students that they are smart and can be successful. Without this knowledge, the kids who are lower on the grade scale will probably always think they are failures, and the kids who tend to receive higher grades will always think they are smart and a lot of times better than others. Humans are hard-wired to learn, and the primary motive for teachers to go into teaching is to help students learn and make a positive difference in students’ lives (Wheatley, K. F., 2015, pg. 9). Students tend to want to please the teachers they have a good relationship with more than the teachers who don’t put any effort into their lives and that in and of itself is intrinsic motivation because they are doing well and it pleases themselves as well as the person who cares a great deal about them. They don’t get a physical reward for doing well, but they feel good about themselves because they accomplished what their teacher told them they could the whole time and began to believe that they could succeed. Either way, as long as we are using the information to encourage the students and they can see what they are doing well on instead of always seeing what is wrong, I think intrinsic motivation will be built within the student.
Bibliography
Alber, R. (2014). Why formative assessments matter. Retrieved from: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/formative-assessments-importance-of-rebecca-alber
Kohn, A. (2008). Who’s Cheating Whom? Phi Delta Kappan. Retrieved from: http://www.alfiekohn.org/article/whos-cheating/ 13 April 2015.
Lewin, Larry, and Shoemaker, Betty Jean. Great Performances : Creating Classroom-Based Assessment Tasks (2nd Edition). Alexandria, VA, USA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development (ASCD), 2011. ProQuest ebrary. Available:http://egandb.uas.alaska.edu:2081/lib/uasoutheast/reader.action?ppg=106&docID=10488667&tm=1428975832182 Web. 13 April 2015.
Tomlinson, Carol Ann, and Moon, Tonya R. (2013) Chapter 6: Assessment, Grading and Differentiation. Assessment and Student Success in a Differentiated Classroom. Alexandria, VA, USA: Association for Supervision & Curriculum Development (ASCD). ProQuest ebrary. Web. Retrieved from:http://egandb.uas.alaska.edu:2081/lib/uasoutheast/reader.action?ppg=135&docID=10774725&tm=1428975296051 13 April 2015.
What is the difference between formative and summative assessment? (2014). Retrieved from https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/assessment/basics/formative-summative.html
Wheatley, K. F. (2015). Factors that Perpetuate Test-Driven, Factory-Style Schooling: Implications for Policy and Practice. International Journal of Learning, Teaching and Educational Research, 10(2). Retrieved from:http://ijlter.org/index.php/ijlter/article/viewFile/261/pdf