Page 209 - Teaching English at Primary Level: From Theory into the Classroom

14

Formative Assessment and Feedback

Chapter Objectives
• Understanding the aims and characteristics of informal or alternative
assessment procedures
• Becoming aware of informal assessment tasks and tools
• Understanding the importance of formative assessment and assessment
for learning in assessing YLLs

Most activities described in Chapter 13 are designed for formally assessing
YLs’ skills and knowledge. However, as several authors point out (Brumen &
Garrote Salazar, 2022; Ioannou-Georgiou & Pavlou, 2003; McKay, 2006), the as-
sessment of YLs should be conducted with extra care and caution, especially
considering their developmental stages, varying abilities, and the potential
impact on their attitudes towards learning.
This is why YLs’ assessment needs to include informal, alternative proce-
dures which are in line with the principles of formative assessment, help
teachers understand learners’ progress and identify areas for improvement.
These range from simple interactive games which engage the learners and
at the same time give the teacher feedback on their progress to more sys-
tematically conducted observations in which teachers fill in a checklist with
important information about individual learners’ language development.
Formative assessments with YLs should be interactive. For example, teach-
ers can use role plays, peer feedback, or other classroom activities in which
learners are actively engaged. Short, informal quizzes during or at the end of
a lesson may also be used to assess the understanding of key concepts. One
way of engaging the learners actively is to ask them to develop assessment
tasks for each other. In Figure 14.1 (p. 210), we can see a crossword puzzle de-
veloped by a learner for peer assessment purposes.
Another important aspect of assessing YLs is that we should collect infor-
mation about their competences all the time and from a variety of sources.
While specially designed tasks for assessing different skills are useful for
summative assessment purposes, there are countless opportunities during
everyday classroom activities which give us the possibility to incorporate
YLs-friendly formative assessment strategies, such as observation and self-
assessment.

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