Welcome to the Modern Classrooms Project Podcast. Each week we bring you discussions with educators on how they use blended, self-paced, and mastery-based learning to better serve their learners. In this episode, Monte Woodard is joined by Carlo Schmidt, Director of Product at Formative, to talk about the platform, its features, and some interesting use cases. 

What is Formative and what features does it have?

Formative seeks to accelerate learning and give educators many tools to promote real-time feedback with their students. Founded by Craig Jones, current CEO and former educator who knew that there was a better way to formally assess students. He found nothing already established to do that, so he created Formative.

Formative can take anything teachers currently do on paper digital and anything digital can be improved. This way, educators can give real-time feedback and interact with students in the moment. Formative can also give the same feedback to many students. If learners are ready for an extension or are making the same mistake, teachers can notify a group of students at one time. You can choose to grade blindly, as a way to eliminate grading bias. Formative also allows for a great deal of personalization on individual quizzes or assignments.

Formative is LTI compliant which means that it can easily pass roster data between the most common platforms (ex: Canvas, Clever, Google Classroom, etc.). Learners can also log into Formative with their Clever or Google accounts, which enables single sign-on. 

Formative is free, but also has features you can enable in a paid version such as anti-cheat checks and a tracker view.

Formative in a Modern Classroom

Monte uses Formative in her own classroom. Some of her favorite features are that there is a wide variety of question types, like multiple choice, fill-in-the-blank, recording, and checkboxes. In a Modern Classroom, you can use Formative to optimize your grading, especially for mastery checks. If you are working with students individually, Formative allows students to continue moving forward and receiving feedback on their progress. When something is incorrect or students are confused, they help each other, empowering the teacher to work with other learners while still checking in with Formative and giving real-time feedback to the entire class.

Some other ideas:

• The teacher-paced mode can give MCP educators more whole-class instruction and lessons. 

• Use Formative to stay connected with your students via SEL checks integrated into your lessons

Learn more on the Formative website or the Formative Facebook page. On Facebook, there are also subject-specific communities. If someone is interested in Formative, they should just make a free account or even get the silver options free for a month. 

Discussion questions for PLC and PD: 

• Monte and Carlo talked about checking biases when giving feedback / grading. What has worked well for you to get rid of bias when giving feedback / grading? Why is this important for our teaching and learning practices? 

• Carlo mentions using Formative for SEL check-ins. How do you check in with students now? What are other ways that you could use Formative in your classroom? 

• What might be some barriers of you being able to use a tool like this in your classroom? 

Our Host

Monte Woodard is a 6th and 8th-grade teacher at the Field School in Washington, DC, and Modern Classrooms Expert Mentor. She's taught in Georgia, Florida, and DC and has taught every branch of science in 6th-8th grade. In her free time, Monte loves reading, crocheting, and playing video games. 

Our Guest

Carlo started his career in education as an academic guidance counselor for a charter school in Brooklyn. Finding himself frustrated that students had no idea if they were or were not on track to graduate, he set out on a mission to create tools for students and teachers to better understand academic progress. After working for several years for KIPP helping with assessment systems, he transitioned to ed-tech to help companies build truly learner-centered products. 

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