This is Jennifer Gonzales welcoming you to episode 236 of the cult of pedagogy podcast in this episode. We're going to talk about five conditions that will help you get formative assessment right. Anytime we teach our students something we need to check to see how well they

learned it. The most common way to do this is with some kind of test which

traditionally happens at the end of a unit a final test, which traditionally happens at the end of a unit, a final exam of some kind.

But if we only do this check at the very end, after all the teaching is done, and we find that

our students haven't learned the material

quite well enough it's too late to do anything about it. That's why we really need to be

checking as we go so if there are problems we can fix them. We call these two kinds of

testing summative assessment, the kind that happens at the end, and formative

assessment the kind that happens during the learning cycle.

In today's episode, we're going to focus on formative assessment.

Specifically, five things we need to do to make sure we get it right because if we do we can dramatically improve our

students learning. Joining me are Kim Marshall and Jen David Lang two people who

have put in some serious time figuring out what works in the classroom.

Kim Marshall is the force behind the highly regarded Marshall Memo, a weekly subscription only

summary of 8 to 10 of the most impactful articles in education.

Since 2003, he has published 50 issues of the memo every year and countless educators rely on his

summaries to stay on top of what's happening in education.

Jen David Lang meanwhile started a similar project in 2007.

She began publishing the main idea. started a similar project in 2007.

She began publishing the main idea,

a single detailed summary every month

of an important education book

...