Angelica Moreno

EPS 513
Formative Assessment Paper

Using Formative Assessments to Guide Writing Instruction
Formative assessment is a measurement tool used to evaluate student
comprehension and understanding of a particular skill, whose goal is to improve learning
through giving quick turnaround feedback and data. An essential component of formative
assessment it the use of continuous feedback that allows you and your students to
determine in a timely manner, progress toward the learning objectives.
Over the last few weeks, we have been working, in my seventh grade Social
Studies classroom, on composing a Document Based Question (DBQ) essay. This
particular class I see twice a week due to the block schedule our Middle School works
with. Part of the steps we are taking now include our analysis of primary and secondary
sources and the formal writing style we use in academic writing for Social Studies.
When introducing the outline that they would use for the essay, we knew that we would
need to scaffold the entire process and break down every step they were taking because
this was the first DBQ they would work on. We spent three class periods breaking down
the analyzing of primary and secondary sources to pull evidence for our guiding question,
In Early Jamestown: Why did so many colonists die? Our students where fairly
responsive to the analysis, but we knew what we would really need to work with them,
would be the formal writing style that comes with writing a DBQ. With this in mind, we
decided to create an explicit rubric on what we would be focusing on and using as our
guide. We knew that we would not be able to master all of the steps that come with a
DBQ. With that said, the components that drove our mini-lessons were thesis statement
and the connection that thesis statements have on topic sentences and body paragraphs.
Angelica Moreno
EPS 513
Formative Assessment Paper
Although these were our main foci, we did go through every component and the purpose
for to it our essay.
My focus and question was on knowledge and skills for this analysis of formative
assessments in my classroom, with the specific focus was the level of mastery on
developing thesis statement and pulling that thesis statement to deconstruct it for topics
sentences and the focus of body paragraphs. Going back to the three components that
drove our mini-lessons, we used Exit Tickets and DBQ essay outlines to collect formative
data about where our students were with each of those components. Our mini-lessons
were framed with an I Do that entails us discussing the purpose of that specific
component, while seeing it used in an exemplar essay. The We Do would entail us
discussing how to develop that component following steps and then we would do a
shared writing of one. Finally, the You Do ask students to develop their own specific
component from the mini-lesson. We use the You Do on their DBQ Essay Outline and
an Exit Ticket about the mini-lesson to gage where students were with the content taught.
The strengths of using this manner to collect formative data on my students is that
they are getting asked to not only practice the writing of the component, but also then we
ask in the Exit Ticket the purpose and the connection that component has to the rest of
the DBQ essay. One of the weaknesses to this type of data collection comes with the
allocation of time. There are many instances where we run out of the most vital time, the
You Do so we allow them to take home the outline to complete, but between the
homework not getting done or still displaying confusion in their writing, we do not get
the necessary information for deciding what to plan for the follow up lesson. We get the
insight on where students are with mastery on that skill/component too late, so we end up
Angelica Moreno
EPS 513
Formative Assessment Paper
going back to reteach an entire lesson, versus doing a quick reteach that same lesson to
clarify confusion on the component. Although our routines sometimes have downfalls
with completion, once we do get the turnaround on that information about our students,
we are able to redesign their learning and small groups to meet their needs. All of these
skills we are working on are also aligned not only to the interim assessment of composing
a DBQ essay, but also it is formally aligned to the Common Core standards of Social
Studies, which is the asking students to write expository and argumentative writing
samples while analyzing a historical question.
The data representations that I decided to pull were those that addressed content
knowledge and skills, specifically when teaching a thesis statement, the reteach of thesis
statement, and the deconstructing of a thesis statement for body paragraphs in a DBQ
essay. The first set of data follows the teaching of thesis statement to the whole class.
After examining that data that came from their exit ticket, I decided to do a reteach of
thesis statement, while shifting my instruction, and finally, transferring that thesis
statement into the body paragraphs and how that foundational skill follows the outline of
the essay.
The first data set and graph represented is based off of the first teach of thesis
statement broken down into the three type of questions that students had to respond to.
The Exit Ticket asked multiple questions that asked students to first identify the thesis
statement in a paragraph, to analyze how they were able to identify the thesis statement,
and then synthesize the purpose to having a thesis statement in a DBQ essay. The data
below is out of a class of twenty-five students, and how they did on each type of question
Angelica Moreno
EPS 513
Formative Assessment Paper
on thesis statement. Specifically, the first question asked student to identify the thesis
statement in an introductory paragraph. The second question asked them to defend why
they knew the sentence they underlined was the thesis statement, and the final question
asked students to synthesize the purpose of including a thesis statement in an academic
DBQ essay.
After collecting the Exit Tickets and gathering the data, I found a few things
about what students understood and could explain that pushed me to consider re-teaching
the lesson the following day. I found that overall most of the students were able to
identify the purpose of including a thesis statement in academic writing. Their responses
0
5
10
15
20
25
Idenitfication Analysis Synthesis
Possible
Correct Responses
Total= 25 Exit Ticket2
Exit Ticket Data on Thesis Statement
Responses on Types of Questions: Identification, Analysis, and Synthesis

Angelica Moreno
EPS 513
Formative Assessment Paper
came in written form about what is the purpose of a thesis statement in academic writing,
and what I found was that because I spent a good amount of time introducing thesis
statements and included various strategies of engagement for discussing purpose, many
of them were able to express in words the purpose of thesis statement. After discussing
purpose, we spent the remaining ten minutes of class looking at an exemplar introductory
paragraph and justifying where the thesis statement was. We were only able to get
through one example of an exemplar essay, and then we passed out the exit ticket for
students to complete. With that said, what I found was that student struggled to identify
the thesis statement, and thus also struggled to analyze why they choose that sentence
since their response to the first question was wrong or off track. This formative
assessment allowed me to examine the time spent on creating purpose as a result of more
students understanding that concept, and how the last ten minutes spent on identification
and analysis in the lesson was not fully laid out for students, which thus brought about
the range of incorrect responses. I then made the decision to make the next days lesson a
reteach of the identification and analysis of thesis statements to further define and refine
the use of thesis statements in our writing.
Following the collection of the data above, I decided that not enough students
were ready to develop their essays by unpacking their thesis statements, so I decided to
do a class re-teach of thesis statements in a DBQ essay. This second time through, I spent
more time focusing the identification and analysis of thesis statements in exemplar pieces
and then also a shared writing on thesis statements as a whole class. We went through
two exemplars on two topics that were distinct from our own, and then we did a shared
writing of a thesis statement for an essay on our topic. For the assessment of the re-teach
Angelica Moreno
EPS 513
Formative Assessment Paper
I passed out an Exit Ticket that asked the same types of questions for students to respond
to from the precious lesson, but I altered the language so that it did not look exactly the
same as the day before. Following that Exit Ticket, I also collect their independent
practice of thesis statements, so that not only was I using data from the Exit Ticket, but
also some independent writing to decide if as a class we were ready to move on to the
next component of writing our DBQ essays. Based on the results, I found that by
focusing more on the identification and analysis more students were able to grasp how
thesis statements are presented in various examples of academic writing, but that it also
enhanced the synthesis question that was aligned to defining the purpose of a thesis
statement. I also found that providing models of exemplars and doing a shared writing
with some teacher modeling, allows student to see what the thought process behind
writing thesis statements is, which as a result further enhances a writers purpose to
including it within their essay. Overall, the data shows that many students benefited from
the reteach, with more of them comprehending how to identify them in an essay and
0
5
10
15
20
25
Idenitfication Analysis Synthesis
Possible
Correct Responses
Total= 25 Exit Ticket
Reteach of Thesis Statement Exit Ticket
Same Type of Questions as Prior Lesson

Angelica Moreno
EPS 513
Formative Assessment Paper
analyzing why it is the thesis statement. For those that are still unsure, we will use their
independent work to further pull data on the students, and determine if we need to create
to small group, pull outs to further focus on this particular skill. In all, we were excited to
see that students had further enhanced their understanding of thesis statements, and so
after this lesson we moved on to deconstructing our thesis statements for topic sentences
and body paragraphs.
The last piece of data that I collected was less focused on the mastery of a skill
but rather a follow up to the mastery of understanding how thesis statements effects and
is integrated in the rest of our DBQ essay. Later that week, we began to unpack the
relevancy of having a strong thesis statement to unpack so that you could have solid and
concise body paragraphs. With that said, students did significantly well on the Exit Ticket
to demonstrate the connection that the thesis statements had on the each of the body
paragraphs of the essay. We did a class model breaking apart the thesis statements for
topic sentences in a body paragraphs, and then they retaught the lesson that I modeled to
me, as I played the student of the class. After this, they completed an exit ticket, where
they took their thesis statement, and unpacked it for the topic sentences of their own body
paragraphs. The questions thet had were first to deconstruct their thesis statements for the
three body paragraphs, then to outline the topic sentences in a graphic organizer
provided, while finally the synthesis question on the process they used to determine topic
sentences for body paragraphs. What I found from the data is that a majority of our
students really acquired the unpacking process, which I would attribute this result to the
visual representation we did in class. Furthermore, I also attribute the positive outcomes
to the digging in we did on thesis statements, which if we had not dug into, the results for
Angelica Moreno
EPS 513
Formative Assessment Paper
this lesson would have been a much wider range of results. Below the data shows an
overall result to the scores they received on the Exit Ticket out of three. The graph
displays the number of students that received a perfect score, two out of three, and then
one out of three. We were very particular on language the students used on the Exit
Tickets, and even with that were glad to see that over 88% of students were fairly
comfortable at deconstructing thesis statements for their body paragraphs.

According to Heritage, using formative assessment is the process of gathering
systematic evidence about the learning your students are doing, and it can come in
various forms and layouts as well. With this basis, we were able to use Heritages
definition of formative assessment to drive the way and the model we use when
presenting Exit Tickets and tasks that we used to collect data on student comprehension
and mastery level on a new skill presented in the writing component of our DBQ essay.
Within my classroom we used the various forms of formative assessments to guide our
teaching when instructing students through the process of writing DBQ essays.
Deconstructiong Thesis Statments Exit
Ticket
3/3 on Exit
2/3 on Exit
1/3 on Exit
Angelica Moreno
EPS 513
Formative Assessment Paper
Continuously we found ourselves pushing to get our Exit Tickets in because we needed to
make sure foundational skills were acquired before moving on the next component.
Especially in writing, foundational skills are so essential to the writing process. Being
strategic in the types of assessment you are using, while also considering the validity of
your questions in essential. With regards to Heritages definition of formative
assessment, she lays out that formative assessment identifies the gap, provides feedback,
needs students involvement, and is created to show the learning progression. Using this
definition to unpack my instruction, I need to make sure that my questions in the Exit
Ticket were able to reveal where students learning gaps were, while also using this same
data to then shift my instruction where students not only saw me model the process of
identifying and analyzing a thesis statement, but also to involve them in the process by
creating thesis statements for their own writing. Heritage really gets at the foundation of
making sure that data is continuously integrated into your lessons and learning objectives,
and that it is also transparent for students to see where they are in the mastery of a new
skill. Without having collected the thesis statement Exit Tickets, I would have moved on
to the next lesson, fining that my students would be more confused as we continued to try
to build on a skill that was not yet mastered. Using the information about their learning, I
was able to take one step back as a class versus various steps back for individual students.
Furthermore, not only did visually seeing the data in graphs help construct my
understanding for what my students were learning, but also through the feedback of the
tuning protocols done on this data, helped me to continue to consider, based on others
feedback, what types of Exit Tickets I was constructing, and also reiterating the process
of using the Exit Ticket as the construction of the learning goal. It had me consider the
Angelica Moreno
EPS 513
Formative Assessment Paper
validity to my questions, and how much information I could truly gather from each
question. This process has pushed me to start transforming my planning and teaching
using backward design, which would mean that I would first construct the objective and
Exit Ticket, and then move on through the steps of the lesson.
In conclusion, after collecting all of this data and using it to redefine components
of my teaching, I have found that I am now more conscious of the building of skills with
a movement to mastery versus the idea of speeding through lessons to be able to say you
have covered a large amount of content. I have also begun to consider on how first to
show skills in isolation, but to move quickly into the integration of the skill in various
facets to create a basis of purpose and understanding through various lenses. Questions
that I continue to consider about formative assessment are what role does formative
assessment play when a lesson is not necessarily focused on a particular skill versus a
culminating integration of various skills? As that point, should you assess all of the skills
present? Is that a valid assessment to use due to it balancing various skills, or does that
type of assessment need more focus to acquire valid and comprehensive data?
Furthermore, when considering ways in which I could assess the use of various skills, I
would toss around the idea of giving students another DBQ essay, with less guided
instruction, and more on them pulling from old learned skills to see how they began to
integrate them in their writing. What I still consider to question is whether that would
now integrate the high stakes factor to their writing, especially if used for a grade. I could
let them begin this writing, and then use the new DBQ as a way to decide small group or
station writing groups, where students would be put in groups based on what skills they
did and did not demonstrate and also their level of mastery with each skill. Doing it this
Angelica Moreno
EPS 513
Formative Assessment Paper
way would then continue to make this information and data gathered to be formative
about student content and skills, without the pressure or high stakes that can come
through a standardized assessment or interim assessment in my class.