assessment for learning

One of the 4 techniques, associated with learning gain, used by the timely practice system - with the aid of the timely practice app.

In a nutshell:

assessment for learning (AfL) is the essential tool for formative assessment;

it tells the teacher how well learners have learned something and so teachers can then act, if need be, to improve that learning.

SRS Learning says

Assessment for learning is the essential tool for formative assessment and an essential tool for spaced learning and mastery learning. It is used to find out whether learners 

• have mastered their learning and are ready to learn more on a topic,
• need more practice, 
• need to become better at reading questions carefully, self checking and correcting or
• need feedback, often between the teacher and the learner in order to move along the road to mastery.

To encourage low attaining and under-achieving learners to engage with formative assessment (and to get the most out of it) we have split the assessment into two types 

• pre assessment assignments where the learner and teacher are deciding "Can the learner do … already?" - that is has some worked been learned. If it has been learned well i.e. the learner gets ✔︎ every time - the work will be fast tracked through the learner's timely practice assignments so the teacher can ensure the learner does really "already know" and so that the learner won't forget (if it turns out the learner had a "lucky" question, but doesn't know how to do most questions we can decide the bite of learning is best learned later)
• timely practice assignments, which consists entirely of work the learner has learned before and will continue to practise in order not to forget and/or to improve the learner's accuracy. learner's know that "the timely practice app thinks I know this" and are prepared to spend a little more time, dig a little deeper into their memories to answer the questions.

The learner realises in their maths lessons they have moved to a place where they are judged on "is … learned yet?" , "is … remembered still?"  and "is … accurate enough?" and that their self-assessment can be "I need more help/ a reminder on …" rather than "I can't do it" "You didn't teach me" So the learner learns also to move away from summative assessment to formative assessment. 

What educational researchers say

"What is needed is a culture of success, backed by a belief that all can achieve. Formative assessment can be a powerful weapon here if it is communicated in the right way.”

Inside the Black Box Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam (2001) http://weaeducation.typepad.co.uk/files/blackbox-1.pdf

Meta-analysis (educational research) says:

"The formative assessment experiments produce typical effect sizes of between 0.4 and 0.7 : such effect sizes are larger than most of those found for educational interventions.  

• A gain of effect size 0.4 would improve performances of pupils in GCSE by between one and two grades.

• A gain of effect size 0.7, if realised in the recent international comparative studies in mathematics (TIMSS—Beaton et al., 1996), would raise England from the middle of the 41 countries involved to being one of the top 5.

Inside the Black Box Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam (2001) http://weaeducation.typepad.co.uk/files/blackbox-1.

A blog from an expert

Dylan Wiliam on AfL

Dylan Wiliam on formative assessment - assessment is the bridge between teaching and learning