Giving Compass' Take:

• The Michael and Susan Dell Foundation is spearheading a collaborative project that chooses specific schools to improve formative assessment practice for teachers and students. 

• How can formative assessments impact learning? What knowledge do philanthropists at the Dell foundation hope to gain with this initiative?

• Read more about the "How I Know" project.  

Using formative assessment requires a willingness to embrace change at all levels–from guiding mindsets, philosophies and classroom culture, to daily schedules and lessons plans. Brea Lewis, third- and fourth-grade math teacher at Ben Milam Elementary, recently confirmed this idea when she reflected that through the incorporation of formative assessment practices, “our lesson cycles have changed significantly.” We explored just what those changes look and feel like in her classroom since transitioning to formative assessment.

Ben Milam Elementary is one of several Dallas ISD schools involved in a three-district collaborative pilot project entitled “How I Know,” an initiative of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation. Through this initiative, leaders and teachers from Dallas ISD, Austin ISD and Tulsa Public Schools have committed to learning about, developing, and improving formative assessment practice for both teachers and students.

To demonstrate how formative assessment has impacted learning in Brea’s classroom, we started by uncovering the large-scale effects of formative assessment on the teacher and students’ roles in the classroom, and also in the overall classroom culture. We then share Brea’s perspective on how formative assessment has impacted the delivery of one specific lesson and her tips for successfully transforming to a formative assessment classroom.

When I reflect on the transition process, what sticks out to me is that it involved asking myself a lot of questions about my students, and my relationship with them. Below are my tips for success to other teachers implementing formative assessment:

  1. Give students more ownership.
  2. Change your own mindset to that of a learner to model the change for students.
  3. Make space for student reflections.
  4. Create learning goals and success criteria.

Read the full article about formative assessments by Brea Lewis and Michelle Berkeley at Getting Smart