Why you should consider formative assessment

Many teachers assess their students’ attainment in English through tests and exams given at regular intervals in the annual school calendar, with a final exam at the end of the school year. Tests and exams can be a good way to collect information about what students know, but they are much less useful in informing your teaching.

All teachers are concerned and interested in improving their students’ learning and progress in English throughout the year. To do this you need to undertake formative assessment throughout the school year, which is continuous – or ongoing – assessment. This means assessing each student’s progress in the course of regular classroom teaching for diagnosis, remedial action and enhancement of learning. It can include:

• observing your students as they carry out routine classroom activities, and making notes from your observations
• grading classroom and/or homework assignments, and keeping records of the grades
• keeping samples of students’ work (written, art, projects, etc.) in a portfolio
• giving short informal tests and keeping records of grades.

This type of assessment will help you understand how well each student is doing in many different areas of English. It will also help you to see which problems individual students are having, so that you can plan activities that develop their skills and thinking.