Formative evaluation of writing
Less grading means more improvement

Most writing teachers depend more on summative assessments of writing skill— usually essays — than on formative assessments.

Bad move.

Teachers should reverse the proportions of effort spent on formative and summative assessments, because:

• Formative evaluation does not require grading. See how to use informal writing in class as a formative assessment tool.

• Students can collaborate on many activities that include formative assessments.

• Students can use teacher-provided aids and strategies to monitor their own writing procedures and correct their own writing.

• Formative assessment is a classroom management tool, keeping the class together and focused.

I suspect that formative assessments are rare in English classrooms. I cannot recall informal writing being used as a means of formative assessment in English classes I took. When I ask other English teachers about their experience, they look at me as if I were speaking Greek.

Formative assessment characteristics

Formative evaluations are the classroom equivalent of a 2-minute typing test. They are:

• Short (not over 5 minutes, 1-2 minutes)

• Timed

• Ungraded

• Required participation for all.

If an assessment is really formative, it not only shows which students have a problem but reveals why or where they are having a problem.

Formative classroom activities

Teachers in technical fields like math, science, and business are heavy users of informal writing. They use informal writing to:

• Activiate prior knowledge.

• Check on understanding of concepts.

• Get students to apply concepts.

• Identify questions students have about a topic under discussion.

• Set directions for additional study.

In many cases, the responses can be as short as a 140-character Twitter post.

Formative outside class activities

Instead of focusing just on the factual content of material studied, formative assessment used outside the classroom often ask students to reflect on what they studied.

You might have students do a set of grammar exercises for homework. Instead of grading the homework, you could have students turn in an admission slip as they come to class. On the slip they would identify the hardest question and why it was difficult. Instead of going over all the questions, you could go over the 2 or 3 that gave most students trouble.

Journaling is another out-of-class activity which can be used for formative assessment, though they typically are used as summative assessments and given a grade.

You might require students to keep a journal of potential term paper ideas, one idea per week, each idea written as a complete sentence. If you had 25 students each turning in one idea a week, you could skim them all and give feedback to 5 students.

At the end of 15 weeks, each student would have more ideas and more feedback on those ideas than you could normally provide in a unit on the termpaper.

Collaborative learning activities can also be used to provide formative evaluation to students. In English classes, collaborative projects tend to be used for teaching content other than writing. However teams or pairs of students can be used effectively for that purpose.