Mod 5 Discussion: Formal and Informal Assessments

One formative assessment strategy I have used with great success is the gallery walk. With a group of 8th graders, many who were struggling readers, I  a gallery walk for them based on a paired set of poems that we had been working to understand. The gallery consisted of quotes from the two poems presented in gallery format. Student then were given a worksheet catalog and in pairs went from gallery station to gallery station to read over the quotes, identify which poem and at what point in the poem the quotes occurred. Then they were to record their understanding of the quotes as related to what was happening as well as theme.

A formative assessment I would consider using in the future would be concept mapping in small groups. I think one of the biggest barriers to understanding meaning is an inexact understanding of the relationship between ideas/images in a text. My conducting concept mapping in a small group, we can activate the prior knowledge of the group to draw conclusions.