Summative Assessment

Teachers usually use summative assessment at the end of a learning section, a term or a year to measure the knowledge and skills that learners developed in that period. Before we dig into summative assessment, you can pause and use this online quiz to test your knowledge.

A summative assessment measures a learners’ mastery of what they were supposed to learn in a specific period. It covers a sample or a selection that represents a portion of the curriculum, or the whole curriculum in some instances.

Knowing which topics to include in a summative assessment can be difficult. Very often a large volume of work was covered, making it difficult to know what to test and what to leave out. This is where an assessment framework can come in handy.

Have a look at the Limina Assessment Framework included here:

How to use the Assessment Framework:

Write down all the topics that you covered in the term. Use your curriculum or topics from the textbook to help you.
Use a blue pen / pencil. Rate each topic /10 (10 being the highest) for how important you feel this topic is as part of the curriculum you covered.
Use a black pen / pencil. Rate each topic /10 (10 being the highest) for how important you feel this topic is as part of the future learning requirements (how critical is it for learners to know that specific topic in the next section of work or in the years to come?)
Plot the blue and black marks on the Assessment Framework.

The results:

Top Priority Topics: these topics have to be included at all costs. Learners should spend the bulk of the assessment time working on questions about the top priority topics.

Medium Priority Topics: These topics should be included but it is not a problem if a few medium priority tasks are left out.

Low Priority Topics: Topics with a low priority rating can be left out of the paper, or can be included when you are looking for 1 or 2 mark questions to complete the paper.

Having identified which topics to include in the summative assessment, the next step is to set questions. Test or exam papers are often structured to include:

40% easy questions;
40% moderately difficult questions; and
20% difficult questions.

Bloom’s Cognitive levels come in handy when you have to set easy, moderately difficult, and difficult questions. Questions that merely require learners to recall information can be set as easy, while questions about analysing or evaluating (a case study for example) can fall in the most difficult category. Questions where they have to show understanding or application can be in the middle (moderately difficult) category.

If you’d like to learn more about setting test or exam papers, or using EdTech tools to help you with summative assessments, consider signing up for Limina’s Assessment Course. This and many other interesting topics are included in the course!