Source: http://bobsprankle.com/bitbybit_wordpress/?p=285

While browsing through the OLDaily articles, I found this interesting article on Celebrating Failure. The point made by this article is that we learn through failure (i.e. video games), and why can’t schools take this approach to help students learn, especially in math? It seems that math teachers tend to use the summative assessment as the guiding force for evaluation, when really, we should be giving lots of formative assessment, letting our students make mistakes, and then using the mistakes they make to help them learn math. If a student is incorrectly solving an equation by not combining like terms on the same side of the equation, then we work on that skill until they get it right. If there is a problem with integers, then we work on integers, or teach them how to use the calculator well so that they overcome the “fear” of not knowing how to do integers.

I love coincidences, and on Friday of this week, I attended a conference for math leadership. In addition to showing us a video on formative vs. summative assessment, they gave us a paper copy of an article by William and Black called “Inside the Black Box.” This article is about how to effectively use formative assessment in teaching. There is a hyperlink to this article about halfway down. I highly recommend everyone read this article because it helps answer the question from last week, “How do we know our students are learning?”

My life lesson for this week has been that I am not doing enough formative assessment in my classrooms, and that by changing the way I teach and adding more formative assessment, I will be better about to know if my students are learning, even if it is only in the short term. By adding more conceptual learning, I hope to increase the retention of student’s math knowledge.