Formative assessment practices

Formative assessment provides information about student knowledge, understanding and skills. It informs next steps in teaching and learning and enables teachers to differentiate for the whole class and/or individual students. Formative assessment often occurs before, within or between lessons.

The high-impact assessment strategies that enable learning are:

• learning intentions and success criteria
• effective questioning
• feedback
• peer and self-assessment
• goal setting.

Effective use of these strategies engage students in their learning. This equips them with the skills they need to become assessment capable learners who take ownership of their learning, using assessment information to determine what they need to do next.

Students who have developed their assessment capabilities are able and motivated to access, interpret, and use information from quality assessments in ways that affirm or further their learning. Absolum et al. (2009:19)

Learning intentions and success criteria

Learning intentions are statements that clearly describe what students should know, understand or be able to do following an activity, lesson or series of lessons.

Effective learning intentions are:

• aligned to syllabus outcomes
• planned for and embedded in units/teaching and learning programs
• written in student-friendly language
• supports for students to understand what they are learning and why
• visible and referenced to throughout a lesson or period of learning
• used in conjunction with success criteria.

Success criteria unpack how students achieve the learning intention. They summarise the key steps or ingredients the students need to fulfil the learning intention – the main things to do, include, or focus on. They can also describe ‘what a good one looks like’.

Success criteria:

• are usually shared early in a lesson and are visible and referenced throughout the period of learning
• support the provision of effective feedback and enable impactful peer and self-assessment
• should be used by students to evaluate their learning and progress towards the learning intention.

Effective questioning

Teachers use questions to:

• cause thinking
• gather information about what students know and can do to determine next steps before and during instruction.

Where possible, questioning of key concepts should be incorporated into units and/or teaching and learning programs. The questions should be at an appropriate level of challenge to cause thinking for all students. Teachers should use a range of questioning strategies to engage students and support them to share their thinking.

Effective questioning also takes advantage of opportunities to promote deep thinking that may arise during general observations of learning activities.

Feedback

Feedback is recognised as one of the most powerful influences on student learning.

Feedback:

• is most useful when aligned with learning intentions and success criteria (Clarke et al., 2003)
• should be timely, specific and provided throughout a lesson or period of learning
• can be verbal or non-verbal, written, visual, formal or informal
• should provide detailed and explicit direction about what students need to do to move their learning forward (CESE, 2020a).

Peer and self-assessment

Self-assessment and peer assessment require students to make judgments about their own and others' work, identify the gap between their current performance and the desired standard and take actions to close the gap. Yan et al. (2022:2)

Peer and self-assessment:

• are most effective when aligned to explicit quality criteria, such as success criteria
• must be modelled and scaffolded by the teacher – students must be explicitly taught how to peer and self-assess
• empower students to plan next steps and identify future learning goals
• should not be considered as grading or marking.

Goal setting

Goal setting:

• promotes a growth mindset
• must be explicitly taught and modelled by teachers
• is most effective when informed and supported by feedback aligned to explicit quality criteria, such as success criteria
• empowers students to be autonomous, self-reflective and analytical learners (Clarke et al. 2003:90).

Further reading

NSW Department of Education (2024) Effective assessment practices – a guide for teachers and leaders.