Formative Assessment Essay

1.0 INTRODUCTION

Student’s academic performance can be measured by assessment either summative or formative. Summative assessments are those assessments designed to determine a students’ academic development after a set unit of material (i.e., assessment OF learning) [1]. Formative assessments are assessments designed to monitor student progress during the learning process (i.e., assessment FOR learning) [2].

The evidence shows that high quality formative assessment does have a powerful impact on student learning. Formative assessment is particularly effective for students who have not done well in study, thus narrowing the gap between low and high achievers while raising overall achievement [3]. This research will focus on formative assessment

Students should receive timely, specific, and task-focused feedback from teachers or other adults, peers, or through structured self-assessment. The main target is to give clear suggestions how students can improve. High quality formative assessment should focus on task rather than student. For example, instead of saying “You are a great database designer”, a teacher with high quality formative assessment will say “You can keep integrity and avoid redundancy very well in this design”.

2. Put student learning at the center. Analyzing formative assessment can help teachers to shape teaching decisions, for example explaining particular material slower or longer that are found difficult by majority of students.

3. Enables students to understand and monitor their own learning by enabling them to see how closely their own work matches a given goal. One of the benefit of formative assessment is that it can help students learn more about the goals for a given lesson, unit, or course. But another advantage is that it helps students to evaluate their own learning more effectively. High-quality formative assessment provides enough detail to give students a clear idea of what, why, and how they are to proceed as they continue to work on an assignment. However, such elaboration needs to be offered in manageable chunks so that students are not