Hi Marie 
Happy New Year to you and thank you for persevering with us. 
 
I have been reading your posts and want to respond to the earlier one about forms of formative assessment.  
I find that often my 'formative assessment' is unplanned 
 
I was doing some professional development with our teachers last week and I gave them a scenario which was based on something I did some time ago when I gave a group of workplace employees I was working with a task to do workplace observations for an hour a day and keep a diary about them following a certain format. All the employees were in roles where part of their job tasks was  to fill in a shift log ( the format I required)  and so I had no qualms about asking them to do this task which was part of a training programme for a Quality assurance role. They were meant to fill in their diaries and hand them into me each week so I could look at them and then discuss them wiht eack of the group. . 
 
Well at the end of week one three people hadn't handed in their diaries and one of them approached me to say he had terrible handwriting and spelling and couldn't do the task. It transpired that he had a workmate fill in the shift log for him every shift. When I followed up the other two it turned out they had similar  issues but not necessarily such a creative response. 
As formative assessment is assessment for teaching then the task  I had asked the group to do  turned out to be formative assessment as I then had to change my approach quite significantly for these three employees. At the beginning  I had planned that the diaries themselves would be the formative assessment activity by contributing to a portfolio of writing. 
 
For me there was also some stuff about making assumptions about learners' ability to do the task but htis experience made me more aware that formative assessment opportunites arise all the time ( planned and unplanned) and need to be recorded. 
 
I suppose that  the biggest lesson I have learned from colleagues is the labelling of these activities as formative assessment and then recording it and discussing it with the learners. Often we do it but we don't name it as such. 
 
kind regards Susan Reid 
Manager Learning and Development 
Workbase the New Zealand Centee for Workforce Literacy 
www.workbase.org.nz
 

________________________________

From: assessment-bounces at nifl.gov on behalf of Marie Cora
Sent: Wed 24/01/2007 5:03 a.m.
To: Assessment at nifl.gov
Subject: [Assessment 589] Your classroom today


Hi out there!
 
Ok, how about this:
 
How do you know what to do in your classroom today?  Do you strictly follow some plan, or do you take cues from the reality of the present situation?  If you follow a plan (strictly or not), how do you develop your lesson plan?  Describe how you do this.
 
For those folks working in the GED realm:  how do you know where to start with your adult students?  Just from the practice test or pre-test or do you do other things as well?  Once the student is placed in an appropriate level, how do you know what to do today with her?  How do you know what she needs?
 
Thanks!! for any of your thoughts!!
 
marie
 
 
 
Marie Cora
marie.cora at hotspurpartners.com <mailto:marie.cora at hotspurpartners.com> 
NIFL Assessment Discussion List Moderator
http://www.nifl.gov/mailman/listinfo/assessment
Coordinator, LINCS Assessment Special Collection
http://literacy.kent.edu/Midwest/assessment/
 
 
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