Measuring Growth

When my son Scott was a toddler, he would grip the windowsill of our farmhouse, stand on tippy toes, and peer out the window to supervise farming activities. Grandpa, who lived in town but worked on the farm, took great pleasure in monitoring Scott’s growth through the window. First, just the top of a tiny head and bright eyes were visible. Before long, the toddler grew and a wide grin revealed itself to the outside world while little hands pressed against the pane. Grandpa and the little overall-clad boy shared a common goal; both were waiting for Scott to reach a size suitable for tagging along and helping with calf chores. The window made measuring progress toward that goal easy.

Wouldn’t it be great if we had a window that allowed us to monitor the academic growth of our students? One online tool that may prove valuable is Formative. While there are many online formative assessment tool options, Formative has several advantages. Teachers may integrate images, videos, audio recordings, and even embed learning tools in Formative. Check out an introductory video here.

In addition to multiple choice, true/false, and short answer, responses may include drawings and uploaded images. Students like that they sign up using their Google accounts and appreciate the clean, clear interface of Formative. Quizzes may be taken by simply entering a Quick Code, which is easy for younger students; however, the creation of classes makes saving and exporting results possible. Quizzes may be assigned to selected classes, and Formative will automatically score most types of questions.

Tools within Formative allow teachers to override scores and provide immediate written feedback while watching live results. Student names may be made invisible to project an answer to discuss with a class.

Learn about these features and more on the Formative community page, which includes excellent, short video tutorials.

You just may find that Formative provides a window through which to view students’ academic growth. Contact me or another instructional coach if you would like assistance getting started.

How do you measure students’ progress toward a goal and provide feedback? How do your students track their own growth? Add a comment if you have a tip to share.

Student Data Tracking

I read an article recently that compared formative assessments to a fitness tracker.  I loved this analogy because many of us can relate.  We love the accountability of a fitness tracker and also enjoy checking in to see how we are doing on our fitness goals.  They keep us on track! Formative assessments in the classroom are the same!  They keep both teachers and students accountable and allow us to “check in” and see how we are doing.

Teachers use formative assessments to see students’ progress toward a learning goal.  But, how are students using this data?  Are students aware of their progress?  It comes as no surprise that research shows having students track their own progress toward a learning goal is a highly effective instructional strategy.  Students take ownership of their own learning data and track it.  They are in control of their learning and see where they are at and where they need to be.  

There are several options for teachers to use as students track their data.  Maybe you can try one of these examples?  Maybe you have one of your own?  Regardless of what form you use, the learning is the outcome.  

Student Progress Chart

Student Standard Tracker

Personal Learning Goal

Let’s help students take on the role of becoming their own “learning tracker”!

Using Google Forms for Assessment

The Google for Education team rolled out several new updates and features this summer that could be beneficial in your classroom. Several of the updates were for Google Classroom, but one of my favorites is in the often overlooked Google Forms.

The new and improved Forms allows users to not only easily add pictures and graphics into their forms, but also allows you to create auto-graded quizzes for multiple choice, checkbox, or dropdown questions. You can include all other types of questions, but users still can't assign a score to short answer questions on the form unless using an add on like Flubaroo. Hopefully, this option will be coming soon.

Even if you are giving a formative assessment with 3 questions that could be multiple choice and the 4th a short answer, the auto-grading feature is still a hefty time-saver, leaving you with only 1 question to manually grade. This can then allow you to spend more time using the data to decide where to go next in your instruction. Not to mention, since the answers can feed directly into a Google Sheet, it is now easy to sort students into groups for reteaching or extension based on their answers.

One of the biggest benefits of using Forms for assessments is the ability to gather all of the student answer data on one spreadsheet. You still have the ability to view individual student data and group analytics on the response tab, but the spreadsheet summary is the most gradebook-friendly.

Another benefit of using Forms is the integration with other Google for Education products like Classroom and Drive. If you are a Classroom user, Forms can be added as assignments with 1 click. If you are not a Classroom user, you can still use the traditional link or email method to send out the live form. Either way, all the results come right back to your Drive.

I have put together a couple of screencasts to show the new features as well as walk you through using forms to set up a quiz. The first one is general, while the second one also shows how to integrate with Google Classroom as an assignment.