"When the cook tastes the soup, that’s formative assessment; when the customer tastes the soup, that’s summative assessment"
Paul Black - School of Education, King's College London
Click on the play button to learn more about the types of assessment.
Formative: Assessment for Learning.
Formative assessment (FA) is a means to get feedback of how the students are learning while it is happening. It not only measures the progress of the student, but also the effectiveness of the teacher. This gives teachers valuable information on which areas needs emphasis & improvement.
The school assess student leaning in the following manner.
- iconAsking question and observing students in class.
- iconCorrecting homework, Projects and finally
- iconTests/Quizes are given after every chapter or two at the end of the month
The primary focus of these tests are not grades, though they are graded, but to determine the effectiveness of the teacher and progress of the student. School's typical report card for classes 1 to 8 shows progress in each subject's rubrics (learning outcomes) through grades (A, A+, B, B+, C, C+ etc.). An example for Grade 4 English rubrics is shown below with grades assigned for each rubric. Test marks are typically not shown in the report card to encourage students and parents to examine the progress of learning and how to improve it, rather than compare performance with other student's. The rubrics are fairly detailed to give teachers, students and parents/guardians a snapshot on performance.
| ENGLISH | Term | |||||||
| Reading: Foundation Skills | I | II | III | |||||
| Read with sufficient fluency and accuracy, level 4 books, with the purpose of understanding. | B | B | B+ | |||||
| Comprehension and Writing | ||||||||
| Demonstrate understanding of key details in a text and is able to fill in the blanks, select option, or T/F, of sentences | B | |||||||
| Able to write a 150 word paragraph to introduce a topic/pic personal experience and a personal letter. | C | B | B | |||||
| Follows the story, Identifies the characters and major events, sequence of events and able to write short sentence answers to questions. | C+ | B+ | A | |||||
| Able to comprehend short poems and write short answers to questions | B+ | |||||||
| Speaking and Listening | ||||||||
| Demonstrate listening skills by taking dictation of a seen/unseen passage | C+ | D | ||||||
| Demonstrate speaking skills | B | C+ | ||||||
| Demonstrate word meanings & spelling of grade 4 and appropriately use idioms. | C | B+ | B | |||||
| Language | ||||||||
| Recognize and use abstract & concrete nouns | A+ | |||||||
| Able to use helping (Aux) & phrasal verbs, understand sub. verb agreement and continuous tense | B+ | A | ||||||
| Understand sentence structure (sub., predicate, object) | A | A | ||||||
| Understand different types of sentences, statement, command, Interjection, question & exclamation. | B | A+ | ||||||
| Under usage of adverbs of manner & frequency | C | |||||||
| Usage of preposition of time, place (in, on, at, by, under, near etc.) & direction. | A+ | |||||||
| Use of comparative adjectives -er/-est. & article 'the' & 'a' | B | |||||||
| identifies synonyms, opposites and rhyming words | A+ | |||||||
| Apostrophe useage in sigular possessive, capitals in Titles & punctuation in Dialogs | A+ | A | ||||||
| Coordinating conjunctions 'for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so' | A+ | |||||||
| Possessive & reflexive pronouns (his,hers, mine, yours, ours, theirs, its - myself, himself etc.) | A | |||||||
| English Project work | B+ | |||||||
Summative: Assessment of Learning.
Summative assessment (SA) happens after student's learning has already happened. It measures the progress of the student at the end of a term or year. Summative assessment becomes formative if students take advantage of Term 1 SA and improve in Term 2. SA helps answer if the student has the minimum required level of knowledge to effectively progress to the next unit of the course or curriculum? To the next class/grade level?
The school assess student level of leaning in the following manner.
- iconTerm-end examinations
- iconStudent course & Teacher evaluation
- iconProjects