Formative vs. Summative assessment

• Formative and Summative assessment are two of the most popular buzz words in education. So what do they mean? 

I like to compare Formative and Summative assessment to playing a sport. 

Formative assessment is like a practice. 

• It is about building skills, and practicing new concepts. 
• It is where a person can make mistakes and not get penalized for them (learning should be filled with mistakes). 
• You are not being evaluated during this time. It is practice. 
• This will be the time that there will be the most growth. 

Summative assessment is like a game. 

• You are being evaluated on your ability. 
• How well you do will determine the score of the game.  
• All evaluations are final... until the next game. 
• The coach will use this time to decide what was a mistake, and what was an error. 
• Mistakes are easy fixes, the player can correct these on their own. Sometimes mistakes will need to be pointed out, in order for a player to see them. 
• Errors will probably need to be addressed with further practice, new drills etc. An error is not always easily fixed. 

Formative and Summative assessment work like a cycle and will continue all year long. 

The end of Term One

It is hard to believe, but we have already completed Term one, and are now half-way through Semester one. A big thank you needs to go out to all of the staff, students and parents who have allowed us to have a successful start to the year. We are a small school, so it takes a lot of people working together to provide our students with amazing opportunities. On that note, I would like to thank Mrs. Mohr, and Mrs. Kovach for all of their hard work coaching this year. Our Jr. Volleyball team qualified for playoffs and Trace Fredsberg qualified for Provincials in Cross Country. Congratulations to Trace on qualifying for Provincials. This is a major accomplishment, and something to build off of going into next season. Way to go!!!

Some of you might be aware that we are trying some different teaching strategies in our elementary end of the school. I wanted to take this opportunity to explain what we are doing and why we believe it will be beneficial. At the end of last year, we as a staff realized that we had to think differently about the way we deliver education. We decided to embrace our small size and our favorable student to teacher ratio. Our goal is to develop an open learning environment, where students will work according to ability rather than age. We are starting this in the Elementary end, but hope that we will be able to try it up to grade nine in the next few years. Our goal is to be able to provide more teacher support for struggling students, while at the same time pushing our FM or EU students, with self-directed learning. For this year, we are going to focus specifically on reading, but in the future, we hope to open it up in all of ELA, and Math. As of right now we are only trying this for a half-hour every day two, but we hope to expand the process in the next little while. If you have any questions or concerns please contact the school. Thanks.