Week 9 - Lauren Geier (partner) This article is an important complement to any discussion on assessment: what kind of feedback will help our students improve? Wiggins describes feedback as "information about how we are doing in our efforts to reach a goal' and as such it needs to be goal-referenced, tangible and transparent, actionable, user-friendly, timely, ongoing and consistent. Wiggins elaborates on these key characteristics; often using sport to illustrate his point. He also gives examples to differentiate feedback from advice and evaluation and grades. This is a great article for teachers because it is very concrete and gives us very clear advice on how to improve the efficiency of our feedback. While some of these essentials may seem obvious, the feedback we give our students on a regular base might not meet all these criteria and it is an important read if we want our assessment to really help students progress.

Although not everything described in this article applies necessarily to all subjects, the idea that teachers need to be more aware of the prior knowledge students have before they present new materials is very interesting. In second language, for example teachers use students' oral and written productions to assess their command of grammar but before any cultural or historical unit, it would make sense to address prior knowledge and rectify what needs to be rectified before introducing new ideas/material.

In this first chapter of his book, Popham (2008) attempts to define what formative assessment is and what it is not. He insists on the fact that formative assessment is a process and in his opinion a classroom process. He refers to a meta-analysis conducted by Black and William (1998b) to show evidence of the benefits of formative assessment and quotes Black and William's claim that "student gains in learning triggered by formative assessment are "amongst the largest ever reported for educational interventions" (p. 61). Popham also warns educators against testing companies who are now offering interim or benchmark tests as "formative assessments" and claims that there's no scientific evidence that district-developed or state-developed periodically administered assessments will improve students' achievement.

This is a great resource for French teachers (it is no part of my DAP - it is just a blog I want to share with my peers) : a lot of recorded conversations up to level B2 to work on listening skills. Scripts are available as well.

Quizlet is a tool that allows teachers to create flashcards, (mock-up) tests and study games. When designing activities, teachers can add pictures and voice over. Teachers can monitor their students' progress and the time they spend on the activities. The activities can be assigned by the teachers but students can go back to Quizlet on their own to review or prepare for an assessment.