EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY

Chapter 8, page 195

Janice’s level is the lowest in the class on this goal, so the teacher asks Janice to come in after
school to work with her on learning how to consider counterarguments in her writing.
Understanding consequences. Most students, including Janice, have mastered this goal. There are
two students who are not yet considering the personal consequences of the Depression, which is what they
are lacking in order to move to the highest level, so the teacher works with these students individually to
help them see what to do to improve for next time.
Understanding causes. Most students, including Janice, are now at Level 3, which means that they
are doing well now at identifying and explaining two or more causes, but they have not yet reached Level 4,
which means that they do not yet explain how these causes interact. The teacher designs and leads a lesson
on the concept of interacting causes, and the class discusses how different causes might have interacted at
the time of the Great Depression. This is designed to help students learn to discuss interacting causes so
that they can move to Level 4.

Summary of Formative Assessment

By carefully evaluating each student’s progress toward the four goals, the teacher is able to adapt
her instruction so as to enhance students’ progress to the goals. She identifies exactly what students are
having trouble with, and then she provides instruction tailored to these difficulties.

After the Week 6 assessments, the teacher will be able to evaluate how well the students have done
overall. She may still want to remediate with students who have not mastered certain goals. And she will
also use what she has learned from the assessments throughout the unit to redesign the unit and make it
more effective next year.

This example has illustrated how teachers can use formative assessment to evaluate exactly what
students are having difficulty with and to adapt their instruction accordingly. Formative assessment is
assessment that is used by teachers during instructional units to identify how to adapt their teaching so as
to help students learn better.