"I thought I could read my students' body language. I was wrong. As an experiment, I used Socrative when I taught binary numbers. What I learned forever changed my views on being a better teacher."
This quote from Vicki Davis, author of the Edutopia article linked below, is essential. As teachers we NEED formative assessment - or Assessment FOR Learning. We need it because we need to KNOW how our students are doing.
If we don't base our teaching/remediation/questioning/activities on how our students are doing then it's hard to say we're really interested in learning. The alternative is to cover content and tell students to learn it. This works fine with highly motivated students who possess excellent study habits and requisite background knowledge. In other words, this works fine for students who don't need a teacher!
But since the overwhelming number of students - even students of higher level courses - need their teachers (thank goodness, or else our profession would be unnecessary) then we need AFL. We need to know for sure how our students are doing so we can focus our teaching in a way that leads to learning - not just covering content.
In the following article, Vicki Davis has shared 5 easy-to-use tools that will help you become a more effective teacher through the use of formative assessment: http://www.edutopia.org//blog/5-fast-formative-assessment-tools-vicki-davis
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