Formative Assessment through Academic Monitoring in Malawi
This blog is part of a series that highlights the education best practices that are the foundation of Chemonics and One World’s work together around the globe. Today’s example comes from the USAID Malawi Next Generation early grade reading activity, where the project has been identifying teachers who use effective techniques as exemplars to help scale across the country.
The Problem
We have an international problem: measuring student learning.
Cities, countries, regions, even global actors, are attempting to create resources to help measure what students know and are able to do. It’s important work, and it’s extraordinarily complicated. Global efforts to advance summative assessment systems are strengthening centralized structures for assessment of learning.
We are keen to also advance support for formative assessment – assessment for learning – and make conditions more enabling for teachers to check and respond to what students have and have not learned during critical moments in the course of a lesson.
A Solution: Academic Monitoring
Academic monitoring is a powerful formative assessment technique that occurs during independent practice, an essential part of any lesson because every student has a chance to demonstrate whether he or she has mastered the content just taught. There is no guessing game or waiting until the end of the unit or even year-end assessment involved in determining what students know and perhaps, more importantly don’t know. Instead, teachers can instantly identify how students are performing through collecting data in-the-moment and providing immediate feedback.
During this formative technique, teachers focus on asking questions, monitoring student work, and providing feedback. These minute-by-minute opportunities also benefit students because they are able to engage more meaningfully in their own progress.
While academic monitoring may seem like something teachers already do instinctively, deliberate planning before the lesson even begins is what will drive student achievement forward in earnest.
The academic monitoring implementation process should follow these steps:
Create an exemplary response. What does mastery look like? What evidence will you need to know that students are getting it?
Determine possible student misconceptions. What might cause confusion? Where might students stumble?
Plan ways to address student misconceptions. How do you respond when students don’t get it? How do you help them clear up their misconceptions? How else might you be able to explain the material? How do you ensure that your response is warm and supportive?
An Example from Malawi
Preparing for the USAID Malawi NextGen Mnzanga Tiwerenge (reading camp), we visited the classroom of exemplary teacher Elese Mesilo to observe a lesson. Elese teaches 70 first graders at Mchengawedi Primary School in Zomba Rural and has an impressive ability to move strategically through her class to identify whether students are on track for mastering their new learning, as illustrated below.
Step 1
Elese models how to write the letter “n” first on the board and then through forming the letter “n” with her finger in the air, explaining to students the down, back up and over movement.
Step 2
While students practice independently, Elese walks to the back of the class where she can get an even better view of their air writing attempts. At this point, she notices that one learner’s hand motions look more like a series of wavy lines.
Step 3
Elese asks the learner to stand up and works with her to correct her hand motions while the other students watch.
In this brief moment, Elese was able to respond to observable student needs. It is evident that in her planning and implementation of the lesson, she:
1. Created an exemplary response
She knew that she was looking for precise hand motions that mimicked the writing of the letter “n”.
2. Determined misconceptions
The speed at which she was able to instantly pinpoint the learner’s difficulty in reaching mastery shows that she had thought through what the potential inaccurate hand motions might look like before the lesson even began.
3. Addressed misconceptions using a warm, friendly manner
She didn’t just tell the learner that she was doing it wrong; instead, she had the learner stand up and watch as she modeled the correct motions again before doing them with the learner. This public approach also allowed others to benefit from her direct feedback.
Her supportive tone conveyed an appreciation for how students were working hard and set a high bar of excellence. On just the second day of school, her students left class knowing that we are all learners, we might make mistakes, and we will all get the support we need until we are all successful.
Academic Monitoring Key Wins
Teachers do not have to wait for a formal assessment to intervene and close achievement gaps.
Students don’t have to wonder whether or not they are successfully practicing a new skill.
Written by
Colin Smith, One World Network of Schools
Augustine Kanyendul, USAID NextGen Malawi