Formative Assessment PD Newsletter: Building Teacher Skill for Checking Understanding in Real Time

Formative assessment is one of the highest-leverage practices in teaching. The research is consistent: teachers who regularly check for understanding and adjust instruction based on what they find produce better student outcomes than those who teach to completion and assess at the end. The gap between what the research shows and what happens in most classrooms is a professional development problem.

Formative Assessment Versus Summative Assessment

Start with the distinction that most teachers can articulate but fewer consistently apply. Summative assessment measures what students have learned at the end of a unit or course. Formative assessment generates evidence during the learning process that the teacher uses to adjust instruction. The purpose is different, the design is different, and the appropriate response is different.

The most common mistake is treating formative assessments as low-stakes summative assessments. When exit tickets are graded, students optimize for the grade rather than showing their actual understanding. When formative checks are announced as quizzes, anxious students show less of what they know. Formative assessment works when students understand that the purpose is to help the teacher teach, not to evaluate them.

Specific Techniques to Use This Week

Name two or three specific formative assessment techniques with enough detail to implement. Exit tickets: one targeted question at the end of class that reveals whether students understood the lesson's core concept. Think-pair-share with a genuine check: teachers listen to pair conversations rather than just waiting for the activity to end. Whiteboards or response slates: every student writes an answer simultaneously so the teacher sees the full class's responses at once.

Give the key design principle for each technique. An exit ticket that asks "what did we learn today?" generates unusable data. An exit ticket that asks students to solve one specific problem or explain one specific concept in a sentence generates data teachers can sort and act on in five minutes.

Using the Evidence to Adjust Instruction

Describe what happens after the formative check. Sort student responses into three groups: demonstrates understanding, partial understanding, fundamental misunderstanding. The distribution tells the teacher where to start the next lesson. If most students are in the understanding group, extend and move on. If most are partially understanding, do a brief focused re-teaching before moving forward. If most show fundamental misunderstanding, the lesson needs redesign, not just repetition.

This adjustment is what makes formative assessment valuable. A teacher who collects exit tickets, puts them in a drawer, and teaches the same lesson the next day has performed a ritual rather than a professional practice. The check only matters if it changes what comes next.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Name the pitfalls that undermine formative assessment. Checking for understanding only by asking "does everyone get it?" -- this generates no usable data. Calling on the same students who raise their hands, which shows the teacher what the most confident students know but nothing about the rest of the class. Designing checks that are too complex to analyze quickly, making the evidence hard to act on.

Simple checks done consistently and acted on immediately are more powerful than sophisticated assessments that require extensive analysis. The goal is a tight loop: teach, check, adjust. The shorter the cycle, the more useful the information.

Connecting Formative Assessment to Grades

Address the grading question honestly. Many teachers feel pressure to record grades for everything students produce. Formative assessment should not be graded because grading changes how students respond and corrupts the data. This may require administrative support for teachers who receive pushback from parents about ungraded work. The school's position on this matters and should be stated clearly so teachers are not navigating it alone.