Dylan Wiliam’s new book, Embedded Formative Assessment, is filled with a number of insights culled from his 35 years of experience in education. The foundation of the book highlights the importance of formative assessment as a tool to improve teacher practice and ultimately improve student learning.
In the book, he provides the 5 strategies that he has come to believe are core to successful formative assessment practice in the classroom:
1. Clarifying, sharing, and understanding learning intentions and criteria for success – getting the students to really understand what their classroom experience will be and how their success will be measured.
2. Engineering effective classroom discussions, activities, and learning tasks that elicit evidence of learning – developing effective classroom instructional strategies that allow for the measurement of success.
3. Providing feedback that moves learning forward – working with students to provide them the information they need to better understand problems and solutions.
4. Activating learners as instructional resources for one another – getting students involved with each other in discussions and working groups can help improve student learning.
5. Activating learners as owners of their own learning – We wrote a recent blog on this topic: self-regulation of learning leads to student performance improvement.
These 5 strategies are also part of our Keeping Learning on Track (KLT) professional development solution that puts these strategies into action with a formal process for teacher professional development. But before formative assessment strategies can be effectively implemented, there needs to be an understanding as to what formative assessment is, and perhaps even more importantly, what it is not by school leaders and teachers.
Dylan recently gave a webinar that emphasized his understanding of formative assessment, and gave some practical techniques for implementing some of his strategies. You can access the webinar at no cost here. We’d also love to read your thoughts or experiences implementing formative assessment strategies, so drop a comment below.
