MTTC Upper Elementary (3–6) Education – Literacy (122) Practice Test

Formative assessment is about ongoing checks during instruction to see how students are progressing and to adjust teaching as they learn. In literacy, that could be listening to a student read aloud and noting fluency, asking quick questions about a text to gauge comprehension, or using a short exit ticket at the end of a lesson to see what was understood that day. These checks help you tailor instruction for the next lesson. Summative assessment, on the other hand, measures what students have learned after a set period, like at the end of a unit. In literacy, an end-of-unit test or a final writing project serves this purpose, showing overall mastery of the skills taught in that unit. So the statement that formative assessment involves ongoing progress checks and summative assessment involves a unit test best captures the difference. The other options mislabel the roles—for example, end-of-unit tests are summative, while quick checks are formative, and a final project is typically summative.