Formative Assessment in PBL Math

Image borrowed from University of Ontario website

Entry Event

• Have you ever finished with a unit of instruction, only to realize you 'lost' half your students on lesson one!?
• Have you witnessed your students furiously copying your every word (pauses, coughs, errors and all), only to discover that they can only regurgitate the information?
• Do you ever notice that in your practice assessment tends to only occur at the end of a unit of instruction, offering few opportunities to correct conceptual mistakes (such as violating order of operations)?
• Do you wish to acquire learner feedback more frequently during instruction?

If your answer to any of the above questions are 'YES', then you are ready for the mini-course ahead. Within this course, you will go through the steps of the design process, view examples of formative assessment implemented in a math project-based learning environment, and will work to design your own lesson to implement formative assessment opportunities. The course itself will reflect the formative assessment practices it discusses.

Course Objectives

• Define and explain what formative assessment is and the benefits of using it in the classroom.
• Identify various types of formative assessment as illustrated through authentic examples
• Design formative assessment opportunities to enhance learning in an identified instructional area.

Your Task

The goal of each unit is to assist you in the design of formative assessment into a lesson of instruction, which is your product for this project. It is hoped that you will actually implement this lesson and continue to use some of the techniques demonstrated in this lesson to help influence instruction.

• Student will re-design a lesson of instruction to meet the PRODUCT RUBRIC criteria and the course objectives (identified above)
• Student will implement this unit of instruction [if applicable]
• Student will reflect upon this experience identifying how they satisfied or did not satisfy the rubric.

1: Formative Assessment- What is it & why use it?

Phase Objectives: Define and explain what formative assessment is and the benefits of using it in the classroom. Learners will begin the design process steps: (1) Identify the problem and (2) Research, brainstorm, investigate potential solutions

2: What does it look like?

Phase Objectives:

3: How do I design with the objectives in mind?

Phase Objectives:

4: Reflection & Additional References

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