Most school courses are content-based, and assessing students’ knowledge through formative assessments is simple: solve the equation, define the vocabulary word, and list the facts. 

In a Skill-Based Health Education classroom, how do we ensure students are progressing toward the learning target, and what do we do if they are not? 

The goal of formative assessments is to gauge whether students are moving towards the learning target, provide feedback to students and adjust our teaching accordingly.

Sounds easy to do, but the exit tickets and checking for understanding assignments readily available to teachers could have been more effective at assessing a skill. Then, after giving the assignment, if teachers don’t use that information to provide feedback or adjust lessons, how do we know if the students are learning?  

My aha moment came several years ago when I created an exit ticket that asked what resources you would use if you needed support for your mental health. Almost every student wrote – find a trusted adult. Is it essential to find a trusted adult? Yes. Is it assessing a skill? No. Did it fulfill my learning target? Partially. Did I want to draw out more information from my high school students? Definitely! 

After that, I slowly changed how I created my formative assessments. I learned how to use performance indicators to set my learning targets and to provide them in the formative assessment. I also learned to establish criteria for success so my students knew exactly what I was looking for and the quality of work they should provide. The most important lesson I learned was how to use that data to keep notes on what worked and didn’t work when I taught a lesson. Reflecting upon the data also gave me feedback I could use to teach the next lesson and how to modify it the next time it was introduced. With my newly developed formative assessment about resources for supporting students’ mental health, I received well-thought-out responses showing students’ understanding of their skill development. They demonstrated how they accessed valid and reliable information and specific community resources they could use for their mental health. 

As teachers, we can continuously improve the way we teach. We can use the same reflection process we require our students to use to identify areas of growth for ourselves and continually improve our teaching methods.  

This microblog post was a featured post in #slowchathealth’s #microblogmonth event. You can search for all of the featured posts here. Please do follow each of the outstanding contributors on social media (including Melissa Quigley, the author of this post) and consider writing a microblog post of your own to be shared with the global audience of slowchathealth.com

Pair this blog post with the following:

Three Ways to Accelerate Assessment by Jen Mead

Assessment: Updating and Improving by Matthew Bassett

Assessment – Let’s Change the Stigma by Amy Falls

Have you read the latest Book of the Month recommendation?