My essay on formative assessment”

Introduction of formative assessment

Formative assessment is basically about the evaluation procedures, either informal or formal, which are carried on by the teachers. These methods better help the teachers for assessing whether their teaching methods are up to the mark or modifications are desired for making improvements to the student’s attainments. It can be done by the diagnostic testing.

Ideas about the formative assessment

The innovative ideas about the formative assessment are as given:

· Think-Pair-Share: This strategy helps the teacher to ask a question from the students and then require them to write down their answers for the question. Then the student’s responses can better be discussed by placing them in the pairs. This idea also provides the teacher with the ability to move around the room and listen to different discussions.

Example: The teacher may ask the students to describe & interpret a specified image. The students then write down their responses which are then shared among the students by making their groups.

· Round Robin Charts: As the name suggests, this idea is about passing the charts & the graphs among the groups of the students. It better helps to evaluate their understanding regarding a particular chart. This activity comprises of 4 to 5 students who start their work by using the chart and the markers. Once the group has finished its working the chart will then be passed to the next group. After all the groups have recorded their responses, their responses are discussed in the classroom.

Example: The teacher can provide the students with a chart to find out the path for a specified destination. All the groups will respond to the problem one-by-one. The solution will then be discussed in the classroom.

· Strategic questioning: The main theme behind asking the strategic questions is to provide the students with the in-depth thinking regrading a concept of immense importance. It tends to show the high-priority of the agenda.

Example: The teachers can pose the questions to the students starting with “how” and “why. It shows two-sided benefits (i.e., how to mitigate the risks for the product’s sale?). For students it is important to know about the priority of the asked question (which requires in-depth thinking). This idea helps the teachers to evaluate about the understanding level of the students.

 Conclusion of formative assessment

Formative assessment is also known as formative feedback, formative evaluation, or the evaluation for the learning. The details of the content as well as the performance are evaluated by providing the qualitative feedback for both the students and the teachers. It is important to understand the importance of formative assessment as it pertains to teach the foreign languages effectively. The implementation of these ideas can better be done by providing the environment for the implementation of these ideas.