Formative and Summative Measurement - Research Paper Example

Teachers employ various methods to increase the results and understanding of the student in a classroom. This includes test-based learning or case learning that helps them achieves the desired target. Learning through a project or real-life exercise is more effective than the routine test. It is also termed formative measurement.

Discussion

A question can be termed as formative in nature or can be easily moulded around to form a summative assessment query.

Both evaluation methods deploy different approaches and the mode of checking the progress of the students. The teacher must only concentrate on the well being of the students. They must evaluate how much progress the child has made with respect to the teachings that have been done in class and what can be done to make things easier for the student. The students should not learn the material from books only, but rather have a full understanding of it. Formative assessment is an ongoing process of benchmarking and evaluating the performance of the child in the classroom.

This technique is highly productive because the teacher observes the student as an individual and gives particular attention to the child. He/she observes how the child solves the given assignments or quizzes and then a method could be derived on how to help the child solve the dilemmas and obstacles he is facing while learning the taught concepts. This method would be effective in my point of view, as the teacher and the student can observe the potential areas they need to work on via quizzes scores and different assessment tools.

They can mutually work to address the problem student could potentially be facing (Rani, 2004). There are many forms of formative assessment that can be executed to serve its purpose. After the teacher has given the lecture, she might ask questions or conduct a review at the end of the class to ensure that the lesson has been fully and clearly understood by the class. Submissions of relevant research work on the previous class topic can be asked by the children and a mid-course evaluation test can be used.

This approach will help the teacher understand the trouble the student is facing in interpreting the subject (Carnegie Mellon University). Once a course or a subject has been thoroughly taught by a teacher to his/her pupil, summative assessment takes into place either at the end of the year or bi-yearly (it varies from school management to management). In this method, the objective is to award a grade to the student by checking his performance and the amount of understanding he shows when conducted the examination paper.

The grade the student secures will determine not only that he has passed the course or not, but rather to what level of accomplishment has been achieved. The scoring may be based upon a letter grading system or percentage scoring. This method would be more effective as the teacher would be able to know how much the user has understood the course and to what extent the pupil can apply the learned theory to different situations that are not taught in class (Liu, 2010).