Assessment & Reporting

Lucía Conde Cambelo

I have never been taught what assessment is so, this subject is being completely

new and because of that, everything represents new learning for me. Despite that, in this

task I will focus on a specific thing that has caught my attention. Therefore, in the

following lines, I will focus on what I have learnt about formative assessment.

Formative assessment is a very important part in the teaching-learning process.

If formative assessment is carried out properly, results in summative assessment will be

better and students will learn more, even they will learn why they are working by one

way and no other or what they are going to be taught or assessed; definitively, they will

take more part in their learning process so they will feel involved and they will have

more success.

However, it is not easy to develop formative assessment in the classroom.

Formative assessment means work hard because teachers have to think and ask students

about their needs and interests, teacher have to communicate with the students in order

to help them to think and express their ideas and what they have learnt. This

communication should be reflective and we have to make students feel secure and

comfortable, creating a good environment in the class which facilitates the teaching-

learning process. It is also really important to give them personal feedback. Teachers

have to understand that feedback is better if it is given personally to each pupil and we

have to avoid comparisons because instead of making students improve we do the

contrary. I try not to compare students because, at the end, what teachers get by doing

this is to confront students.

Finally, I would like to say that it is truly important to let students know what

they are going to learn in each unit (learning targets) in order to make them feel part of

their own learning process and to foster them to learn and study more. Moreover teacher

have to give students clear examples to understand what they are being taught and try to

focus instruction on a day-to-day basis because, by this way, we can realized if students

are really improving or not and we do not have the necessity of doing written exams in

which students feel more nervous and anxious.

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