Summative assessments are important because they give an evaluation of student learning at the end of an instructional unit by comparing it against some standard or benchmark. When used properly, this assessment can show the students full understanding of the material. A summative assessment that works well is one similar to the way I teach guided by the standards and involves the students truly showing what they have learned.
Projects, presentations, papers and tests are just a few ways of assessing students. It is important when using any of these summative assessments to have the student understand what is being asked of them, a rubric is often super helpful to provide that understanding.

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Assessing students' knowledge and instruction is a multifaceted task in which it is important to use both formative and summative assessments. The relationship between instruction and assessment is important and knowing how to reflect on students responses, where there are misconceptions, and keeping track of the progress of the learning material is important as a teacher. These assessments should be used to discover students strengths and weaknesses but beyond just that I believe that it is important to inspire students to want to learn and seek the challenge and find out what they don't know as much as what they do. I believe this will change their feeling of success from being the grade they get on a test to the understanding of the material being presented to them. When the focus is on the material and the student instead of the grade, it empowers them to have a desire to learn and explore for themselves.