Summative Assessment: “Must Do” Behavior 5 of the Teaching ALWAYS Actions™
The Teaching ALWAYS Actions are ‘must do’ behaviors or essential teaching practices teachers must do every day in their
classrooms to ensure students are engaged and therefore, learning. See the Sandbox Notes™ for The Five Teaching
ALWAYS Actions; Action 1: Procedures; Action 2: Targets; Action 3: Practice; and Action 4: Feedback.
Action 5: Summative Assessment
Record a grade from a student achievement score applying a well-developed test and/or a performance
assessment (both designed and aligned to targets taught) to score student achievement.
Alignment to Evidence-Based Practice: Hattie’s Meta-Analysis Research (2009)
Ask students how they will perform on the test and they can tell you. Set student expectations higher
than students set for themselves.
After students practice learning tasks aligned to learning targets while receiving specific feedback, they are ready for the
teacher to judge or grade their work. Now teachers need the critical skill of developing good summative assessment tools
including tests and performance assessments. Summative measures are included in a student’s grade unlike the formative
assessment or “pulse checks” used during practice sessions.
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Summative Assessment: “Must Do” Behavior 5 of the Teaching ALWAYS Actions™
Continued
Only data from summative measures are averaged as part of a student’s final grade. Within a 30 day time period,
teachers plan segments of instruction that include scaffolds of learning targets. Teachers create tools to use for
summative purposes at the end of each instructional segment. This occurs after students practice the skill the teacher
intends to measure. When designing or evaluating existing summative assessment tools, one must keep this purpose in
mind. That is, just as learning targets scaffold instruction, summative assessment tools must evaluate student learning
on the major blocks or segments of instruction along the way.
Today’s Teacher Tip is from Who’s Engaged? Climb the Learning Ladder to See by Janet Pilcher, Ph.D.
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Hattie, John. (2009). Visible Learning: A Synthesis of Over 800 Meta-Analyses Relating to Achievement. New York, NY:
Routledge.
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communities for the purpose of helping teachers become highly effective and engaging students to learn and
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(https://www.facebook.com/iTeacherSuite).
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