Instant Instructional Response through Short Formative Assessments

“…if real success is to attend the effort to bring a man to a definite position, one must first of all take pains to find him where he is and begin there.…to be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner. Instruction begins when you, the teacher, learn from the learner, put yourself in his place so that you may understand what he understands and in the way he understands it….” – Soren Kierkegaard, The Journals, 1854

What is “Instant Instructional Response”?

Instant Instructional Responses are short focused assessments that enable teachers to gather information about students and quickly adjust instruction to precisely meet student needs.

These short assessments are designed to identify current understanding, knowledge, skill, and/or feelings that are key to the lesson that is about to begin. These assessments do not measure all objectives for a lesson. Rather the assessments gather only the information needed to immediately make instruction more precise to learner needs. We can call these short formative assessments, “Instant Instructional Response”, because the assessment can be given and instruction adjusted in one class period. Literally, as the Kirkegaard quote states above, these short assessments enable teachers to find out where students are and then move students toward the established learning goals and standards through specific instruction.

What is formative assessment?

Formative assessments are very much like going to a doctor for a regular medical check-up. Formative assessments are quick check-ins on particular areas to ensure that everything is moving along in an expected way. Medical check-ups are designed to focus on assessing important areas that are keys to good health. Often a check-up enables a doctor to catch the beginnings of a problem before it develops into something that can harm a patient. Like a check-up, formative assessments enable teachers to spot barriers to student learning in a lesson or potential student strengths that can be leveraged before the lesson begins. Using information from a formative assessment, teachers can instantly respond through instruction to student learning needs. 

For example, teachers sometimes: 

• adjust the beginning of a lesson to provide missing background knowledge, 
• form purposeful groups for learning, 
• choose strategies for mini-lessons, and/or 
• direct students to specific learning activities. 

Students benefit from formative assessments because in addition to providing the teacher with information to adjust instruction, the assessments are designed and implemented purposefully to further student learning as well. Formative assessments further student learning by clarifying learning goals, enabling students to set learning goals and reflect on their progress, and providing information so that students realize what specifically they need to learn and can seek help for specific knowledge and skills.

Why is “Instant Instructional Response” (formative assessments) important?

1. Teachers need more instructional time

Instant Instructional Response is important because teachers need more instructional time to help students achieve learning goals. One way to create more time is to focus instruction on what students need instead of trying to cover everything in the curriculum with the same emphasis for each student or “go over” all of the skills with all of the learners. For example, imagine the difference between going over all homework problems with the whole class versus an Instant Instructional Response. By using an Instant Instructional Response assessment strategy such as “homework rounds” the teacher focuses instruction and saves time.

Homework Rounds

Step One: Students correct homework in small groups by sharing their answers a round in a circle one problem at a time. If different answers come up then students discuss to figure out if a mistake was made or if there are multiple answers to the problem. A recorder jots down the number of problems that were discussed in the group on an index card. Note: the teacher may be circulating or working specifically with one group or conferencing about homework with individual students during this time.

Step Two: The teacher collects the index card from each group. Looking across the groups the teacher can easily see which problems many groups had trouble solving and different ways to adjust instruction to be more precise and efficient.

Step Three: Instant Instructional Response might include:

• “go over” only the problems that most groups discussed
• Pull small strategy groups focused on the concepts in the problems that were discussed
• Review only the concepts that were discussed
• Add a few additional practice problems to review concepts that were discussed
• Create an exit card (2 to 3 problems including a question that asks students to explain their thinking) that requires students to use the concepts from the problems discussed to gain more information on individual student performance

Going over just the problems that confused many students and/or teaching a concept as well as meeting with small groups of students who made common mistakes is much more precise and requires more activity learning and reflection from students, and takes far less class time. Instant Instructional Response enables teachers to make precise decisions about how to structure class time and how to individually help students during a class period.

2. Students need frequent feedback to pursue learning independently

Students need to know the expected learning goals and where they are in relation to those goals in order to set learning goals, monitor their own progress, and make decisions about what they will do to help themselves learn. Instant Instructional Response helps the teacher share responsibility for learning with the students. Thinking about our medical check-up metaphor, Instant Instructional Response is similar to a conversation between a doctor and patient at a medical check-up where the result of the conversation is that the patient leaves with information about themselves including needs and strengths to pursue good health independently. Instant Instructional Response is as valuable for the student as the teacher because the result is that the student has the information needed to pursue learning independently.

3. Effective Differentiated Instruction

Differentiated instruction needs to be precise and measured to monitor the effectiveness of teaching in closing achievement gaps. Instant Instructional Response enables teachers to immediately respond to learner needs in specific ways. The learning outcome of the instructional response is easier to monitor because the teaching is directed at a specific learning need for a particular lesson. Student responses to these formative assessments can be collected over time to monitor patterns in how students learn most efficiently and to determine future learning goals. 

What does Instant Instructional Response look like?

Keys to planning and implementing Instant Instructional Response

1. Know what you are measuring.
2. Know how you are going to use the results.
3. Collect only the information that you plan to use in the near future.
4. Require students to learn from the results.
5. Plan to measure growth and change.

 Instant Instructional Response may look quite different in classrooms based on the age and the subject being taught, however, the key purposes remain the same throughout the grades and subjects. Here are a few suggestions for teacher planning for each key to formative assessment.

1. Know what you are measuring.

• Label each problem or task with the learning objective or standard that the problem measures. 
• Include a summary table or graph where students can count the number of problems correct/incorrect by learning goal. Require students to reflect on this data chart to determine the strengths/needs including knowledge, skills, and habits that the assessment made visible. The data chart and reflection questions are completed after the assignment is graded.

2. Know how you are going to use the results.

• For Instant Instructional Response, collect only information that can be used to make instruction more precise and efficient. For example, a pre-test might survey student knowledge on an entire unit that is about to begin. Some of that information will not be in a lesson for several days or weeks. That type of pre-assessment may be useful for long term planning or for pre-post unit level assessments. However, Instant Instructional Response is different. An Instant Instructional Response would only assess what will impact instruction in the next lesson or two. Perhaps student background knowledge for the next upcoming lesson would be assessed. Then the Instant Instructional Response might be that students would be assigned one of two short articles to read as a Do Now, one article would provide needed background knowledge or the other would extend background knowledge. The Instant Instructional Response is typically assigned to specific students based on a need or strength that was recognized by both the teacher and student.
• Assessments may be a review or survey of new materials or skills. Instant Instructional Response can happen before, during, or as an exit card at the end of a lesson. The assessment is given with a purpose of using the information to improve instruction.

3. Collect only the information that you plan to use in the near future.

• Collect only information needed to create purposeful groups or to decide who would benefit from a mini-lesson or review independent practice problems.
• Focus on specific area(s) and share assessment purpose with students: e.g. content knowledge, vocabulary, understanding of concepts, preferred learning methods/strategy, specific skills mastery, or how student learned this in the past.

4. Require students to learn from the results.

• Help learners know themselves by asking them to summarize their performance on all assignments/tests pointing out their strengths, areas where growth is needed, types of errors (simple mistake, not knowing, misunderstanding). 
• Ask students to consider their feelings and habits “What kind of relationship is there between my studying method and the test results?”  “What about this topic interests me or connects to things in my life?”
• Use performance summaries to quickly form groups for mini-lessons or to find expert students to assist other students after school or at another study time.
• Ask students to set and monitor learning goals based on data from Instant Instructional Responses. Encourage students to look for patterns of change, growth, and consistency among their responses over time.
• Note: if measuring interest or background knowledge, ask students why they feel inclined toward a certain preference or how they acquired their current knowledge.

5. Plan to measure growth and change.

• View data from Instant Instructional Response Short in the context of other assessments and information.
• Measure understanding, skills, knowledge, habits, and feelings in multiple assessments to measure change over time and student growth related to specific instruction.
• Use Instant Instructional Response to justify specific intentional instructional choices within the established curriculum.

What’s Next? After Instant Instructional Response: Adding Supports and Extensions

Short formative assessments make visible to both teachers and learners that supports and/or extensions to the established curriculum are needed to meet the learning needs of all students. Supports and/or extensions usually have one of four main goals to make learning accessible, accelerate the pace of learning, review/practice previous learning, or provide needed information or develop missing skills. 

Accessible – making learning opportunities more accessible

1. Provide clearly written objectives at an appropriate level of difficulty. 
2. Provide more than one objective, making sure learning tasks are complex.
3. Add visual or auditory examples for the objectives.
4. Connect new learning to familiar experiences.
5. Make visible what students already know.

Accelerate – design tasks to accomplish learning goals efficiently

1. Adjust the amount of time learners have to spend on specific tasks.
2. Have learners spend time only on needed learning.
3. Choose tasks that offer double duty, for example practicing a skill while teaching new content.

Accelerating the curriculum can be focused on adding rigor for all students by increasing engagement and spending less time on known learning or mastered skills. Acceleration is needed to provide opportunities for both extensions and remediation.

Review/Practice – offer an opportunity to repeat previous instruction and skill practice

1. Pull a small strategy group to review
2.  Reduce the amount of new content knowledge on some homework assignments and add review material as homework.
3.  Include review material as part of a project in an upcoming unit.
4.  Have one night of homework or class activities once a week be DYO – Design Your Own. Based on results from Instant Instructional Response, ask students to identify learning goals and select from the teacher created assignments the best fit for their learning needs.
5. Have a routine of choosing material to review in homework or class activities as a routine. This avoids stopping instruction to review skills and knowledge for exams and other assessments.

Provide missing information – close gaps by providing missing information/skills

1. Organize time for students to work with the teacher who teaches missing information/skills to a small group.
2.  Ask students who are seeking help to make an appointment with students who have requested and have the skills to be mentors. Arrange a routine time for appointments with mentors.
3.  Assign multiple projects for students to complete that will require different amounts of time. Create one project that will take students a significantly shorter amount of time to complete, but that will assess the same content knowledge. Pull students for a lesson to provide background knowledge or missing skills who have been assigned the shorter project. Students should be able to finish both the mini-lesson with the teacher and the project at the same time as the other students who are finishing the longer independent project.

Grouping is always purposeful, but never always. Groups are always changing.

Based on formative assessment data, teachers group students into purposeful learning groups to create efficient and effective learning situations. 

For example, at times it is easier to pull students into strategy groups for mini-lessons targeting specific skills that everyone in the group needs to practice. This is efficient when a short review or clarifying lesson is needed by some, but not all students in a class. At other times, grouping students in mixed ability groups organized by common interest might be important for research projects. Sometime it is important to group students by reading level so that they can develop reading fluency. At other times it is more efficient to pair students by one strong and one developing reading level because learning the content is more import than developing fluency for this particular lesson. Therefore, the groups are purposeful to efficiently and effective facilitate meeting the instructional goal.

There are many different types of groupings, such as:

• Reading level
• Communication Method (strengths and/or area for growth): Drawing, Writing, Building, Moving, Speaking
• Social Group – with friends
• Previous background knowledge
• Interests
• Expert or developing a particular skill

Group size Includes: individual, partners, small groups, and half the class. Often learning activities use more than one type of student grouping. So having classroom routines for students to move into groups and to conduct conversations in groups is essential. (See the Well Developed Classroom Blog on Roles and Rounds for more information).

Most importantly, match the type of group to the most efficient and effective way to achieve the instructional goal. Consider space and time to move students as part of the criteria for determining effective and efficient student grouping for learning activities.

More Resources

Ainsworth, L. & Viequt, D (eds). (2006). Common formative assessments: how to connect standards-based instruction and assessment. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Andrade, H. & Cizek, G. (2010). Handbook of Formative Assessment. New York: Routledge.

Burke, K. (2010). Balanced assessment: from formative to summative. Bloomington, IN: Solution Tree Press.

Chappuis, S. & Chappuis, J. (December 2007/January 2008). Informative Assessment. Educational Leadership. Alexandria, VA: Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development. 65, 4, 14-19  http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/dec07/vol65/num04/The-Best-Value-in-Formative-Assessment.aspx 

Fisher, D. & Frey, N. (2007). Checking for Understanding: Formative Assessment Techniques for your Classroom. Alexandria, VA:  Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Greenstein, L. (2010). What Teachers Really Need to Know about Formative Assessment. Alexandria, VA: Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development.

Huebner, T. (2009). Balanced Assessment in Multiple Measures. Educational Leadership. Alexandria, VA: Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development. Nov. 2009, 67, 3, 85-86 http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/nov09/vol67/num03/Balanced-Assessment.aspx 

Stuart, L. (2003). Assessment in Practice: A View from the School.  Newton, MA: Teachers.

Stiggins, R. Assessment through the Student’s Eyes. Educational Leadership. Alexandria, VA: Association of Supervision and Curriculum Development. May 2007, 64, 8, 22-26 http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/may07/vol64/num08/Assessment-Through-the-Student’s-Eyes.aspx