"You don’t understand anything until you learn it more than one way."
... Marvin Minsky
Formative Assessment Techniques
Formative Assessment is a tool used by the teacher to continuously monitor student progress in a non threatening, supportive environment. It involves regular descriptive feedback, a chance for the students to reflect on their performance, take advice and improve upon it. It involves students’ being an essential part of assessment from designing criteria to assessing self or peers. If used effectively it can improve student performance tremendously while raising the self esteem of the child and reducing the work load of the teacher.
Tools for Formative Assessment
Language
- Listening Comprehension
- Reading Comprehension
- Debate/ speech/ Group Discussion/ Role Play /Presentation
- Dramatization/ Dialogue/ Conversation/ Commentary
- MCQs/ Quiz
- Grammar Exercises.
- Writing/ Completing a poem, story, script, play, diary entry etc.
- Web Charts, Concept Mapping
- Visual Representation
- Letter, E-mail, data interpretation, article, bio sketch and dialogue completion
Mathematics
- Data handing and analysis.
- Group projects
- Problem solving
- Maths Lab Activities
- Quiz/ oral questions
- Experiments
- Presentations
- Chart, model making
- Visual Representation
- Simple and interesting assignments
- Mathematical puzzles based on various theorems.
Science
Experiments
Information gathering and deducing Presentations on science concepts/ experiments Investigations for stated problems MCQs and Science Quiz Simple and interesting assignments Group assignments and projects
- Model Making
- Science symposium/ seminar.
- Preparation of various compounds/salts
- Explanation of different natural phenomenon using scientific principles.
Social Science
Written assignments involving inference, interpretation and evaluation Commentaries
Simple projects (group & individual) Presentations (group & individual) Quiz and MCQ’s Models and charts. Debates
- Symposium / Seminar
- Conducting interview of historical figures
- Role plays
- Dramatization of historical events
Procedure for Formative Assessments
The suggested split up of syllabi will be followed by teachers for formative assessment.
- The minimum number of formative assessment tasks as suggested in the annual plan have to be conducted. However, teachers can give more than the minimum number of tasks depending on the need and time available.
- The performance of students in each task will be assessed on the basis of assessment criteria given.
- The total of marks obtained by each student in the formative tasks will be calculated and reduced to 10 marks. For instance, if three tasks of 5 marks each have been given for FA 1 and a student obtains 3, 3 and 2 in these tasks, the total obtained by the student will be 8 out of 15. The weightage for 10 will be (8 -r 15) x 10 = 5.33 = 5 = Grade C2 (The total will be rounded off to the next whole number if the decimal is 0.5 or more. If less, it will be ignored). Similarly the mark will be calculated for FA2, FA3 and FA4 and the total will yield the marks in formative assessment out of 40% marks for the whole academic session.
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