Products & Resources
Books
Feedback for Continuous Improvement in the Classroom

Put feedback to work for everyone to make a difference—now
Feedback connects, deepens communication, and helps everyone focus on advancing student learning. What if you could use the dimensions and facets of formative feedback in ways that emphasize authenticity, equity, and care for ALL students?
Educators Brent Duckor and Carrie Holmberg show you how to plan, enact, and reflect on feedback practices within lessons and across units using an accessible, comprehensive, and innovative framework that illuminates the path towards equity and excellence for all. With evidence-based research and real classroom examples, Feedback for Continuous Improvement in the Classroom answers: What is formative feedback? How does it influence student outcomes and teacher pedagogy? Why are well-defined learning goals, aligned with rich tasks and progress guides, essential to making feedback truly formative? What are essential facets of teacher, peer, and self-driven feedback? How does feedback work best in whole-class, small group, or individual configurations? What can make written, spoken, and nonverbal feedback modalities more effective—for all? How can focusing on feedback improve learning across all subject matter disciplines? Prompts for self-reflection, videos, vignettes, and scaffolds throughout help readers see how effective feedback can be embedded into classrooms and school communities committed to discovery, growth, and deeper learning.
Cite Source:Duckor, B., & Holmberg, C. (2023). Feedback for continuous improvement in the classroom: New perspectives, practices, and possibilities. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Mastering Formative Assessment Moves: 7 High-leverage Practices to Advance Student Learning

How do you know if students are with you at the beginning, middle, and end of a lesson? Can formative assessment offer a key to better teaching and learning during instruction? What if you could blend different formative assessment moves in your classroom, with intention and care for all students, to help make better instructional decisions on the fly and enjoy more teachable moments?
With a Foreword by John Hattie internationally recognized scholar and author of Visible Learning, educators Brent Duckor and Carrie Holmberg invite you on the journey to becoming a formative assessor by encouraging you to focus on seven research-based, high-leverage formative assessment moves: priming, posing, pausing, probing, bouncing, tagging, and binning.
As teachers use these moves to develop formative assessment skills, they learn how to uncover students’ misconceptions—as well as their own sense of deeper learning in the classroom. Each chapter explores a classroom-tested move, including foundational research, explaining how and when to best use it, and describing what it looks like in practice. Highlights include case studies, try-now tasks, and tips and advice from beginning and seasoned teachers who use these formative assessment moves in their classrooms.
This book has been endorsed by leading scholars and researchers in educational assessment including Professors Jim Popham, Lorrie Shepard, Gene Glass, David Berliner, Lee Shulman and P. David Pearson.
Cite Source:Duckor, B., & Holmberg, C. (2017). Mastering Formative Assessment Moves: 7 High-leverage Practices to Advance Student Learning. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.
Articles
Formative Assessment in Seven Good Moves

Why is the teacher asking “Why?” so much? Why is the teacher not calling on Mary and John, who have their hands up? And why is the teacher putting all answers on the white board, even the wrong ones?
Students may struggle with such questions if they’re unfamiliar with assessment practices that seek to promote student learning, rather than those that merely focus on evaluating achievement. This article looks at seven moves teachers can make to improve their formative assessment techniques and become better, more responsive formative assessors in the process. These include priming students first, posing good questions, pausing during questioning, probing student responses, bouncing questions through the classroom, using tagging to generate a wide range of responses, and using binning strategies to make sense of their students’ learning progressions.
Cite Source:Duckor, B. (2014). Formative assessment in seven good moves. Educational Leadership, 71(6), 28-32.
Making Moves: Formative Assessment in Mathematics

What is formative assessment, or as we refer to it, doing FA? Giving quizzes? Managing interim test data? Processing exit slips? It turns out that doing formative assessment in mathematics classes depends greatly on teachers’ and students’ use of language–producing language, taking language in, and sharpening language skills.
Research on teacher professional learning has shown that formative assessment can improve student learning more than most instructional practices (Hattie 2012). Empirical evidence indicates that thoughtfully implemented formative assessment practices improve students’ learning, increase students’ scores, and narrow achievement gaps between low-achieving students and others (Black and Wiliam 1998).
Given the role that students’ achievement in middle school mathematics classes can play in college-going trajectories (Balfanz 2009), articulating how formative assessment can support equity in mathematics classrooms is critically important. Some conceptualizations of formative assessment are more explicit than others in their focus on language use (Hakuta, 2013).
In this article we present our conceptualization of formative assessment with the FA Wheel, introduce the FA moves—priming, posing, pausing, probing, bouncing, tagging, and binning—and illustrate the moves at play in one middle school mathematics class. Each of these moves lend themselves to sustaining focus on the development of academic language for all students, which is critical to fostering equity in mathematics learning and teaching.
Cite Source:Duckor, B., Holmberg, C., & Rossi Becker, J. (2017). Making moves: Formative assessment in mathematics. Mathematics Teaching in the Middle School, 22(6) 334-342.
Rewriting teaching practices in our own voice: When lessons become texts and texts become lessons

Using the framework of instructional moves that can also serve as assessment strategies, this piece cites numerous examples of teachers reflecting over a two-year period on their teaching practice to explore the applicability of Joseph Harris’s meta-language for revision, to the supervision of beginning teachers and the nurturing of reflective practice in experienced teachers. The intersection of formative assessment moves with Harris’s work is considered as are the implications for ELA teachers seeking and modeling feedback on their content.
Lovell, J., Duckor, B., & Holmberg, C. (2015). Rewriting teaching practices in our own voice: When lessons become texts and texts become lessons. English Journal, 104(6), 56-60.
Seven High-leverage Formative Assessment Moves to Support ELLs

Sound in-class assessment strategies can make a big difference in deepening ELLs’ learning.
In the authors’ 2017 book Mastering Formative Assessment Moves (ASCD), they outlined seven high-leverage formative assessment strategies that promote ambitious teaching and deeper learning. Since then, they’ve worked with pre- and in-service teachers who are implementing the new English Language Development Standards (2014) in California, and they have begun to see how these strategies can serve as the natural bridge to help English language learners reach greater proficiency in their understanding of academic language.
Cite Source:Duckor, B. & Holmberg, C. (2019/2020). 7 High-leverage formative assessment moves to support ELLs. Educational Leadership, 77(4), 46-52.
Chapters
Focusing on Moves-based Formative Assessment to Increase Equity of Voice in Middle School Mathematics: A Case for Video-based Professional Development.

This chapter presents a qualitative case study of middle school mathematics teachers engaged in a school-based professional development module focused on formative assessment. The collaborative lesson study employed a moves-based approach, highlighting the role of instructional practices such as priming, posing, pausing, probing, bouncing, tagging, and binning (Duckor, 2014) that provide windows into students’ mathematical thinking.
Attention to student thinking—and to teachers’ thinking about student thinking—is key to advancing standards-based mathematical and next generation science learning in the classroom (Coffey, Hammer, Levin, & Grant, 2011). Fostering teachers’ attention to student thinking and getting to know teachers’ thinking about student thinking are also key to instructional leaders’ and instructional coaches’ efforts to nurture learning environments where students and teachers hold joint responsibility for their interactions and learning
The moves-based formative assessment framework facilitated teachers’ attention to feedback loops in classroom talk, while promoting instructional spaces for students to use academic language to reason mathematically based on common assessments and NCTM Standards.
Findings indicate the middle school teachers’ use of video stimulated recall involving their classroom instructional practices and facilitation from university coaches enhanced participants’ reflective practice. This form of peer-to-peer instructional coaching, centered on formative assessment driven lesson study, supports deeper understanding for teaching mathematics in diverse middle school settings.
Cite Source:Duckor, B., Holmberg, C., & Rossi Becker, B. (in press). Focusing on Moves-based Formative Assessment to Increase Equity of Voice in Middle School Mathematics: A Case for Video-based Professional Development. In S. B. Martens & M. M. Caskey (Series Ed.), The Handbook of Research in Middle Level Education: Preparing middle level educators for 21st century schools: Enduring beliefs, changing times, evolving practices. Washington, DC: AERA Press.
Webinars
Feedback for Continuous Improvement in the Classroom: Empowering Students and Teachers to Size Up “What’s Next?”

This 50-minute webinar provides new perspectives, practices, and possibilities for energizing feedback exchanges in K-12 classrooms to guide and support collaborative learning. Content focuses on practices that engage students in peer and self-assessment aimed at growth and improvement, rather than on scores, grades, and points.
Duckor, B., & Holmberg, C. (2023, May). Feedback for Continuous Improvement in the Classroom: Empowering Students and Teachers to Size Up “What’s Next?” Invited presenter for Center to Close the Opportunity Gap Spring Speaker Series, Long Beach, CA. https://ccog.calstate.edu/webinars-recordings
Making real-time formative assessment moves that make a difference

This 60-minute webinar explores foundational research for each move, explaining how and when to best use it during instruction and describing what it looks like in practice with concrete examples from pre-service and in-service professional learning settings.
Note: You do not have to be an ASCD member to watch this archived presentation, but you do have to register to view it. It is free of charge.
Duckor, B. & Holmberg, C. (2017, July 27). Making real-time formative assessment moves that make a difference: An introduction to the FA moves framework [Webinar]. In ASCD Summer Boost Webinar Series. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/professional-development/webinars/mastering-formative-assessment-moves-webinar.aspx
Resarch Talks
On feedback for deeper learning: From normative theory to practical usage in classroom settings

This 50-minute lecture provides historical perspectives, a review of research based practices, and examples of innovative tools for energizing feedback exchanges in K-12 classrooms. Highlights include the emphasis on peer and self-assessment aimed at growth and improvement in projects in Oregon and Kentucky.
Cite Source:
Duckor, B. (2023, April). On feedback for deeper learning: From normative theory to practical usage in classroom settings. Invited talk at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca/Kolozsvár, Romania.
On measuring feedback for deeper learning: From normative theory to practical usage in classrooms

This 50-minute seminar talk provides a deep dive into measurement possibilities with formative assessment in teachers’ enactments of classroom-based practice. It offers an example of how to build and validate measures of teachers’ use of questioning strategies (Duckor & Holmberg, 2019, 2020) and invites a similar approach to measuring and modeling formative feedback practices in the K-12 classroom. A new research-based formative feedback framework (Duckor & Holmberg, 2023) is discussed with consideration of the most promising dimensions–configurations, directionalities, modalities-of feedback practice. Highlights include challenges with and opportunities for linking quality measures of formative feedback practice to support teacher development and personal growth in the profession.
Duckor, B., & Holmberg, C. (2023, July). On measuring feedback for deeper learning: From normative theory to practical usage of tools and practices in classroom settings. Invited talk at the Educational Measurement Interest Group at the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia.