Formative assessment in science

Sue Howarth is an ASE Chartered Science teacher and former Biology teacher of the year. She was
a teacher-trainer at the University of Worcester and is now chair of the West Midlands branch of
The Royal Society of Biology. She is a Fellow of both The Royal Society of Biology and The Royal
Society of Chemistry, and has written a number of publications, including Success with
STEM (Routledge). She provides an evidence-based summary of how formative assessment works.

What is a formative assessment?

You may already know about formative assessment and how it is different from summative
assessment, but it never hurts to be clear and to be certain that you understand how it applies in
science learning and teaching. Here’s a table that compares the differences and similarities:

Formative assessment Summative assessment

Assessment for learning Assessment of learning
Provides immediate feedback and ideas for Provides feedback on achievement to date
improvement (feedback and ‘feed
forward’)
Helps students target specific areas of Helps students set new, longer-term goals
skills, knowledge and/or understanding to
work on in the near future
Can be really brief, even just one question May be longer than formative assessment
Constantly monitors student learning; can Often involves longer-term monitoring, often as a
help teachers to improve their teaching, to guide to whether a student is on target, or to
recognise where students are struggling assign a target (such as an exam grade)
and address problems quickly
Likely to happen in most lessons, with the Mostly happens at ends of topic, ends of term,
potential to happen many times during ends of year or via external examination
each lesson
Can happen before, during and/or after May happen after practical work or at the end of
practical work one stage of practical work, e.g. planning,
recording or concluding
Ideally forms a dialogue between assessor Uses one-direction assessment, from assessor to
and student student
Often, feedback is in the form of a Often, feedback is via a mark or a grade, usually
comment which can be written or oral written down
Phrases such as: Has no specific phrases associated with it
WWW – what went well …
EBI – even better if …
are used
Is often ‘low stakes’ and parents/guardians Is often ‘high stakes’ and parents/guardians may
are not involved be involved
Work is assessed

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 The assessor can be the teacher, a teaching assistant, another student (peer assessment) or the
student themselves (self-assessment)

The two types of assessment can be clarified by looking at examples of how students might be
assessed.

Examples of formative assessment Examples of summative assessment

Ask students to: Ask students to:
Draw a table to record the results from an Record results from a piece of practical work in
investigation; this is checked before any a table that they have constructed; the results
results are taken and the way that they have been recorded are
assessed
Sketch a concept map about a topic that is Sketch a concept map about a topic that has just
about to be revisited; this is then passed to been taught; collect this in for marking
another student for feedback
Make a list of the key points to include in an Write an account of the problems that humans
account of the problems that humans would would face if they lived on Mars; this is then
face if they lived on Mars; after watching a marked by the student using a checklist of key
video clip on the topic, the student adds to points
their list, using a different colour

Does using formative assessment work?

Based on the evidence, yes. John Hattie (Hattie and Timperley, 2007, and Killian, 2019) has
shown the importance of feedback, a key part of formative assessment, on student achievement
quantitatively. His data have been calculated to show ‘effect size’ of different aspects that
influence teaching and learning. The bigger the effect size, the greater the impact on student
learning.
Hattie’s effect scale (Killian, 2019) runs from –0.9 to +1.62 and you can see that aspects involving
feedback (highlighted) all score highly (anything above 0.4 makes a significant difference to
students’ achievement). An aspect not involving feedback has been included for comparison.

Aspect Factor Effect size

Response to intervention Strategies emphasising 1.29
feedback
Strategies emphasising feedback Classroom discussion 0.82

Strategies emphasising success criteria Feedback 0.70

Strategies emphasising feedback Formative evaluation 0.48

Learning strategies Teaching test taking and 0.3

coaching

For written formative feedback to be effective, it has been shown that comments alone work
better than comments plus a mark or grade (Wiliam, 2014). This is because students focus on
their given mark or grade and so do not bother to read or process comments. It can take hours of
your time to write meaningful comments for a class, including advice and praise, so make sure

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that your students read what you have written by not providing a distracting mark. If you have to
give a mark, keep it in your mark book!
When considering whether formative feedback works, be aware that Ofsted (2014) are of the
opinion that ‘constructive feedback from teachers ensure that pupils make significant and
sustained gains in their learning’.

How is formative assessment in science different?

It isn’t. There are just a lot more opportunities for formative assessment as you can use it before,
during and after practical work; for practical skills and for working and thinking scientifically.

Opportunities in science for formative assessment – and

what to do with the results
There are many opportunities during most science lessons to carry out formative assessment. The
only lessons where this might not be possible are during formal tests. Listed below are just a few
ideas to get you started. Aim to try as many as possible and at least one different activity per
class per week, so that you build up a large repertoire.

• Hold a quick true/false quiz at the start of the lesson, via hands up with closed eyes (so no
copying what peers do) or using mini-whiteboards turned round on a set count.
You may need to think on your feet here, as if students know less – or more - than you had
anticipated, you may need to change part of your lesson.
• Ask students to work in a small group to make a model of something, e.g. the solar system
using modelling clay.
Ask groups to visit each other’s models and provide constructive feedback. The groups can
then carry out suggested improvements to their models.
• Have a class discussion about an aspect related to the topic your students are learning about.
Often, aspects that have social, moral, ethical or economic issues make good discussion
points. To share out the discussion fairly, give students one or two wooden splints (to use as
‘permissions’ to speak). Once their ‘permissions’ have been used up, it is someone else’s turn.
Allowing speakers to respond to each other can give you an idea of misconceptions or
misunderstandings held by students. Your role is to facilitate the discussions and try to
involve as many students as possible.
• Ask groups of students to present their conclusions at the end of a practical investigation to
the rest of the class.
Encourage the rest of the class to ask questions such as:
What could have been improved?
Where might any errors (scientific uncertainty, rather than mistakes) have occurred?
How many repeats were carried out (and why this number?)?
Were any means calculated? If so, what was the range of the results?
Give the class some questions like these to ask, or give them time to write out some
themselves. By asking about experimental design, you will find out what your students
understand about experimental skills, and by providing comments about what the students
could have done better, you are giving formative feedback. To ensure that students can
respond to your feedback, allow time for them to amend their conclusions after their
presentation.

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• Give out ‘exit tickets’ near the end of the lesson. Each ticket has a few questions testing
understanding of the lesson’s learning objectives. Ideally, not only give time for the questions
to be answered but also to be peer marked.
Collect the ‘tickets’ in as students leave and use them to inform your planning of their next
lesson. The questions, and both the correct and incorrect answers, could be incorporated into
a starter activity.

Don’t forget!
Formative assessment activities need to be followed up. A common point made by tutors of
trainee teachers after watching a lesson can go something like: ‘Congratulations on incorporating
lots of formative assessment in your lesson, but what are you/your students going to do as a
result of the assessment?’
Dylan Wiliam says that ‘if there’s a single principle teachers need to digest about classroom
feedback, it’s this: The only thing that matters is what students do with it. No matter how well
the feedback is designed, if students do not use the feedback to move their own learning
forward, it’s a waste of time.’ (Wiliam, 2014)
Finally, if you are thinking formative assessment seems like hard work (it isn’t), copy and print
out the statement below, from Wiliam (2014), and put it where you will see it often:

‘Feedback should be more work for the student than it is for the teacher.’

Teachers who make good use of formative feedback will be well on their way to teaching that
improves learning.

References and further reading:

Beasley, J. (2014) The Perfect Science Lesson. Independent Thinking Press. See, particularly,
pages 73–90 on feedback.
Education Endowment Foundation (2018) Improving Secondary Science report.
Hattie, J., and Timperley, H. (2007) ‘The Power of Feedback’, Review of Educational Research,
77 (1) 81–112.
Killian, S. (2019) ‘Hattie’s Updated List of Factors Influencing Student Achievement’
Ofsted (2019) School Inspection Handbook.
Wiliam, D. (2014) ‘Is the Feedback You’re Giving Students Helping or Hindering?’

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