Assessment+Q+and+A

If you have questions about Assessment or have found particularly good resources, please list them here:

I'm still confused about formative and summative assesment/evaluation. I understand that summative is EVALUATION, once the soup has left the kitchen as it were, but is it true that ONLY summative assignments should count towards the final grade? If that's the case, should we not be marking formative assignments? In my teachable, everything is formative until the final 30% culminating activity, which is summative. I'm pretty sure that's not how it's supposed to be, but to complicate matters, our principal was apparently angry that teachers were calling unit tests summative evaluation. My question is this: if each unit only has one or two summative activities, and we're assessing but not grading several formative activities, is that enough feedback for students and us to justify the final grade for each unit? Also, what would define a summative acivity as opposed to a formative one, other than the obvious that summative is somehow cumulative? Thanks. Rob B.

include component="comments" page="Assessment Q and A" limit="10"