Formative and Summative Assessment

Formative assessment is a way of assessing students' understanding and knowledge about a particular subject. Worksheets, brainstorming, using manipulatives to show how a student solved a problem are a few ways to execute a formative assessment. A summative assessment is about asking questions and only wanting one answer. The most obvious type of summative assessment is any standardized test. Unit tests are also summative because you test a specific number of units that you have discussed in class. You give students questions, and you grade based on whether the student responded with the correct answer or not.

Formative= look for understanding

Summative= Test/grade on specific answers

A technology tool that a teacher can have students use as a formative assessment is blogger. The purpose of our class being given specific prompts to respond to allow our professor an opportunity to go through each post to see if we are understanding and learning what we need to be. We can convey confusion, excitement and many other feelings simply by how we react in our blogs.

For a summative assessment, I, as a teacher, may require my class to make Prezis about the 13 original U.S. colonies. I may have them work in groups and work on one colony per group. The key thing that would make this assignment summative is a rubric. If I issue a rubric ahead of time to the class and demand that they follow it, I will grade based on how well they followed it. The Prezi may indeed allow for some formative assessment, but the act of grading according to a rubric makes the assignment a summative assessment in the end.