ABSTRACT
The initial approaches to instruction and assessment discussed in Chapter 4 focused primarily on summative assessment--on assessment of what students had learned after they completed some unit of instruction. The more we observed in classrooms, the clearer it became that assessment needed to be ongoing. This meant that we needed to make students' thinking visible so that they could receive feedback from their peers and others (e.g., Peterson, Fennema, & Carpenter, 1991). Without feedback, learning is extremely difficult, if not impossible. Effective uses of feedback provide opportunities for formative assessments-they are formative because they affect the actions of those trying to learn and teach.
