Summative Assessment: A Comprehensive Guide

January 30, 2019 Jordan Nisbet Teaching Strategies

When gauging student learning, two approaches likely come to mind: a formative or summative
assessment.
Fortunately, feeling pressure to choose one or the other isn’t necessary. These two types of
learning assessment actually serve different and necessary purposes.
In this article, we’ll be exploring:

 A formative and summative assessment definition

 Difference between formative and summative assessment
 Pros and cons of summative assessment
 9 effective and engaging summative assessment examples
 Helpful summative assessment strategies

Definitions: What’s the difference between formative and

summative assessment?

Formative assessment occurs regularly throughout a unit, chapter, or term to help track not only
how student learning is improving, but how your teaching can, too.
According to a WestEd article, teachers love using various formative assessments because they
help meet students’ individual learning needs and foster an environment for ongoing feedback.
Take one-minute papers, for example. Giving your students a solo writing task about today’s
lesson can help you see how well students understand new content.
Catching these struggles or learning gaps immediately is better than finding out during a
summative assessment.
Such an assessment could include:

 In-lesson polls
 Partner quizzes
 Self-evaluations
 Ed-tech games
 One-minute papers
 Visuals (e.g., diagrams, charts or maps) to demonstrate learning
 Exit tickets

So, what is a summative assessment?

Credit: Alberto G.
It occurs at the end of a unit, chapter, or term and is most commonly associated with final
projects, standardized tests, or district benchmarks.
Typically heavily weighted and graded, it evaluates what a student has learned and how much
they understand.
Examples of summative assessment include:

 End-of-unit or -chapter tests

 Final projects or portfolios
 Achievement tests
 Standardized tests

Teachers and administrators use the final result to assess student progress, and to evaluate
schools and districts. For teachers, this could mean changing how you teach a certain unit or
chapter. For administrators, this data could help clarify which programs (if any) require tweaking
or removal.

Formative vs summative assessment

While we just defined the two, there are five key differences between formative and summative
assessment requiring a more in-depth explanation.

Formative assessment Summative assessment

Occurs throughout a chapter or unit Occurs at the end of a chapter or unit

Improves how students learn Evaluates what students learn

Covers small content areas Covers complete content areas

Monitors how students are learning Assigns a grade to students’ understanding

Focuses on the process of student learning Emphasizes the product of student learning

During vs after
Teachers use formative assessment at many points during a unit or chapter to help guide student
learning.
Summative assessment comes in after completing a content area to gauge student understanding.

Improving vs evaluating
If anyone knows how much the learning process is a constant work in progress, it’s you! This is
why formative assessment is so helpful — it won’t always guarantee students understand
concepts, but it will improve how they learn.
Summative assessment, on the other hand, simply evaluates what they’ve learned. In her
book, Balanced Assessment: From Formative to Summative, renowned educator Kay
Burke writes, “The only feedback comes in the form of a letter grade, percentage grade, pass/fail
grade, or label such as ‘exceeds standards’ or ‘needs improvement.’”
Little vs large
Let’s say chapter one in the math textbook has three subchapters (i.e., 1.1, 1.2 and 1.3). A
teacher conducting formative assessments will assign mini tasks or assignments throughout each
individual content area.
Whereas, if you’d like an idea of how your class understood the complete chapter, you’d give
them a test covering a large content area including all three parts.

Monitoring vs grading
Formative assessment is extremely effective as a means to monitor individual students’ learning
styles. It helps catch problems early, giving you more time to address and adapt to different
problem areas.
Summative assessments are used to evaluate and grade students’ overall understanding of what
you’ve taught. Think report card comments: did students achieve the learning goal(s) you set for
them or not?

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— Goldstar (@goldstar) January 20, 2019
Process vs product
“It’s not about the destination; it’s about the journey”? This age-old saying sums up formative
and summative assessments fairly accurately.
The former focuses on the process of student learning. You’ll use it to identify areas of strength
and weakness among your students — and to make necessary changes to accommodate their
learning needs.
The latter emphasizes the product of student learning. To discover the product’s “value”, you can
ask yourself questions, such as: At the end of an instructional unit, did the student’s grade exceed
the class standard, or pass according to a district’s benchmark?
In other words, formative methods are an assessment for learning whereas summative ones
are an assessment of learning.
Now that you’ve got a more thorough understanding of these evaluations, let’s dive into the love-
hate relationship teachers like yourself may have with summative assessments.

Are you a school or district admin who wants to learn more about Prodigy?School leaders can
use Prodigy to:

 Gauge student preparation for standardized testing

 Inform teacher instruction to drive student achievement
 Pinpoint students’ working grade levels and their levels on key strands