Formative vs Summative Assessment

What is the difference?

If you are anything like me, every time my colleague or superior mentions "formative assessment", a fear runs down my spine. At times I confused it with summative assessment. In this post, I aim to quickly and loosely define them.

Formative assessment

Formative assessment is aimed towards providing quality feedback, gudiance and comments for the teacher or student. This information is then used to improve the teaching and learning.

One example of formative assessment is a simple periodic questioning of students during a lesson is a way for the teacher to check if the teaching of a concept was effective.

Summative assessment

Summative assessment is like a final judgement or grading of work. Examples would be the O Levels or N Levels.

Conclusion

While summative assessments are inevitable as part of national examinations, we as teachers should also seek to add formative assessments to our framework.

In fact the two are not mutually exclusive -- we can use our common test as a way to inform students of their current abilities by adjusting our lessons to suit their deficiencies.

Review yourself

Dear friends,

I am currently an assigned mentor to one of the practicum teachers. For most of her lessons, I made her write a reflection. This is because the most consistent assessor of her teaching will not be me, the principal or even the students. Other than God, the most important assessor is herself.

In this way, I hope she will be self-reflective and able to correct herself after every lesson.

A teacher to all students

Recently at the St John International Cadet Camp 2016 at Hong Kong, a Singaporean cadet from Gan Eng Seng said I was the "best officer" he ever met. He pointed out graciously that I was the first teacher he had seen to stand up for the rights of others he did not know.

Honestly, it baffled me. I would have thought any teacher would have done the same thing I had. Maybe because I see myself as a teacher to all, rather than a specific school.