Formative Assessment Checklist

Looking for a formative assessment checklist to keep you organized with data? Standards checklists are one of the easiest, most efficient ways to keep track of student understanding. For language arts skills, I have found student portfolios to be an effective way to store student anecdotal notes, evidence for progress and student areas of strengths and growths.

The first step to using this formative assessment strategy is to get organized. Data can be very overwhelming when it is all over the place so streamline the assessing system before using assessment in a formative way. Sign up below to download this FREE guide to learn how to organize your formative assessment system today.

Why formative assessment is important to organize..

Formative assessment is one of the most important tools that we can use as teachers to help our students make real progress. However, if not organized, all of the valuable data becomes worthless. In order to talk about student understanding, we must be able to speak with examples and real information. Using checklists can help to make data tracking an easy, more streamlined approach.

Formative Assessment Strategy Examples with Checklist Cards

Standards based checklist cards make it much easier to interpret data from formative assessment giving a snapshot of a student at a glance. See the steps below for how to make this process smooth and simple.

Step 1: Prep a Portfolio

Print standards based checklist cards to a small and staple or glue into a folder of your choice. Folders work great because the pockets can be used for assessments such as exit tickets, reflections and anecdotal notes.

Download the free guide for formative assessment organization ideas above to learn a more detailed process for prepping a portfolio.

Step 2: Observe and Gather Anecdotal Notes

Once you are organized, it is time to find a purpose for an observation and prep an anecdotal notes form that is helpful for that situation. See a few different examples of anecdotal notes forms below.

Observe a student, take good notes and analyze those notes to find teaching points for instruction! Read more about other types of anecdotal notes or see other anecdotal notes examples.

Step 3: Teach Targeted Instruction

Once you’ve analyzed the observation and anecdotal notes, find resources to teach those very targeted teaching points.

These lessons don’t have to be long! They could take place over a few small groups or only need one time of meeting with students. Be sure to teach skills or allow for inquiry but ALWAYS give students a chance to practice the skill before assessing. Read more about analyzing anecdotal notes to find targeted teaching points.

Step 4: Use Formative Assessment Strategies for Reading

Use any formative assessment strategies for reading such as exit tickets, reflections, questioning or self-reflections. Think about the teaching point and what you want students to know before deciding on a formative assessment.

Formative assessments do not need to be graded for real grades but should be used to drive instruction! They help teachers to know whether students have mastered a skill or need more time to practice. They are also a great thing to communicate with parents BEFORE getting to summative assessments. Read more about formative assessment types that are easy to implement.

Step 5: Document progress on standards based checklist

Create a checklist to document progress. I like to use standards based checklists because it helps to keep me on track with our learning objectives, has very clear teaching points and is easy to communicate with parents.

The final step is using data from formative assessments to check off standards on a checklist once they are mastered. I will often use a circle for skills that have been assessed but still need to be practiced and a check for skills that have been mastered to help me keep track.

Read more about coding systems like checks and circles.

How do formative assessments help students?

This process of using formative assessments is helpful to students because it allows teachers to be very specific with instruction meeting students exactly where they are in their learning. Breaking down larger skills is imperative in helping students in the building blocks of their learning so we must be responsive with our teaching and keep track of student learning to get them to mastery.

Standards based checklist cards have been an amazing formative assessment strategy in helping me to keep track of all the data. You can create your own based on your objectives or grab these already aligned to common core standards checklist cards for all literacy standards.

Getting organized is an important step in using any formative assessment strategy effectively. Start today with standards checklist cards or another strategy make formative assessment part of your natural teaching style!

P.S. – Don’t forget to download this free guide to help you organize the resources and tools that will help you capitalize on data and formative assessment in your classroom.