ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the formative assessment tasks and then traces the ways in which those tasks grew and changed through the course of engaging in the Formative Assessment Design Cycle. The design of a high-quality formative assessment task matters greatly as it's the starting point for drawing out student thinking that's aligned with learning goals. Each formative assessment task a teacher selects, adapts, or designs is an embodiment of a particular type of instruction. Formative assessments would be more likely to elicit big ideas and mental models about which the teacher doesn't yet know or at least get at how students are using declarative or procedural knowledge to answer a question. Ideally a high-quality formative assessment task would have the potential to truly reveal the state or status of student thinking rather than to have little chance of making a student's ideas explicit.
