Assessment and feedback

  • 7 minutes

Assessment and feedback are essential to measure growth and progress in the primary-age hybrid learning classroom. Assessment can be either formative or summative. Feedback is an important aspect of formative assessment to help students improve and continue the learning process. When students are on campus, educators have the opportunity to give immediate feedback. When moving online, feedback must be given in a similar timeframe. 

Formative assessment can look different depending on the purpose and tool being used.  When developing assessments in the primary-age classroom, assessing learning looks different for each student. It is imperative that educators create assessments and offer feedback that supports the learning of each student. Educators can leave written notes and also talk through their feedback by leaving audio and video for their students. Formative assessment is a low stakes way to check students' learning and meet the students where they are. 

Class may start with a "Do Now" activity to gauge student prior knowledge and end with an exit ticket to quickly assess and modify learning for the following day. During class, educators have the opportunity to provide polls for live assessments or add a post for discussion threads. Formative assessments may be charts and checklists added to a Teams assignment for students to have clear expectations of the task and can be used for data analysis to identify learning gaps and modify learning. 

Feedback, especially when personalized, is an effective method to promote learning in a hybrid classroom. Feedback should be cyclical in which the students are constantly receiving input from their educator and modifying their work.  Feedback may be from educators, peers, or self-review. If the feedback is quick and relevant, the students will use it to improve their learning outcomes.

Summative assessment should be authentic and meaningful. Summative assessments may be given as quarterly assessments or be organized as a student portfolio. An alternative to summative assessment may be in the form of Project Based Learning (PBL) and Challenge Based Learning (CBL) where educators use short- or long-term projects that connect to the standards. One way to remove stress is by creating a positive assessment experience.  Using tools that are familiar to students, such as Forms or Teams assignments, is an easy way for primary-age students to feel comfortable with assessment. Differentiated assessment and feedback in a hybrid primary-age classroom is an important aspect of the learning process.

Tools and features for assessment and feedback

Teams

  • Assignments with rubrics provide clear expectations for students; rubrics can be added to each assignment allowing students to see where their points for scoring evaluations were added, and gives the option to leave comments with each value to assist with revisions 
  • Polls in the Posts tab allow for quick check of learning; educators can use Forms or Polly by typing @forms or @polly and create the poll directly in the chat 
  • Assignments that integrate Word can be reviewed in real time; adding comments to the documents allows students to review their work and comment back after they make their changes 
  • Insights in Teams allows educators to collect data and view engagement, assignments, and workload. Learn more with Actionable analytics with Insights in Teams 
  • The Parent Digest keeps parents, guardians, and caregivers up to date on student grades 

OneNote

  • Students can create a portfolio section in their notebook and document learning 
  • Educators can add written, audio, and video feedback to students' OneNote pages 

Forms

  • Educators can use Forms for both formative and summative assessment 
  • Students can receive immediate feedback with the automatic grade feature 
  • Immersive Reader and Picture Dictionary can read the questions and choices aloud and identify difficult words for emergent readers 

Flipgrid

  • Students can describe their learning while educators and students respond with feedback 

Minecraft