Assessments can address the problem of “Teachers who don’t take responsibility for their

students’ learning” (Marshall, 2018). They are great tools not only to understand and monitor
students' learning but also to understand if the teachers' instructions actually support the
learning of specific student groups. Teachers can have prepared great instructions but it
might not fit the current group of students they are teaching, formative assessments can
help during the school year to understand short-comings and adapt instructions accordingly.
This post will first discuss the power of formative assessments as a reflective tool for teaching
practice to then analyze how formative assessments improved my instructions.

Formative Assessments to Improve Teaching Practice

“If teachers do not make adjustments before students come back the next day, it is probably
too late” (William, 2007 as cited in Marshall, 2018). Formative assessments are able to pick up
problems in real time, they are short check-ins with the students, like exit tickets, think-pair
share methods or quick question rounds at the end. They can help to identify problems of
instructions on the spot and can help the teacher to change their approach immediately.
It is important to actively search for evidence if instructions are working or not and not
waiting passively until a summative assessment when it is too late to adapt teaching (Bovell,
2014). Furthermore it is important that changes are imminent and should not be a matter of
changes every school year (Assessing your teaching effectiveness, n.d.). Formative
assessments can be a fast way to adapt teaching while being on the go, they are a good tool
for the teacher to assess their teaching but at the same time a great tool for the students to
understand their learning process.

Formative Assessments in my Classroom

Formative assessments in my current context (university in Cambodia) are still very new, as
most of the courses in the university are based on summative assessments.
My classes are mostly focused on writing or academic writing. At the end of the course, the
summative assessment will be a full essay of some sort. I teach very similar courses to
different student groups. The content is not diverse but my learners are.
I started to implement smaller writing tasks throughout the semester. Starting for instance
with only an introduction to an essay. These smaller portions of writing were then in some
cases commented by me with feedback or I would set up peer-reviews in certain cases. They
would be verbal in class or on Moodle where I would use the discussion forum for feedback
where the other student gave feedback using rubrics provided by me.
This way I had constant feedback on if my instructions were on the right track leading them
to the summative assessment in the end. I was able to react on a weekly basis to adapt or
change my instructions. I was able to adjust in real-time. For students learning it is important
that feedback is immediate, they are also able to adjust and follow the new route laid out by
them by the change of instructions as well as having the feedback from the teacher and
peer.

Using assessments in real-time accompanying my instructions was eye-opening and made

classes more suitable for the different student groups I am teaching. As every student group
has different needs and difficulties this approach was great to adapt my instructions
accordingly while teaching the same content to everyone to ensure a positive outcome for
all my student groups.

References

Assessing your teaching effectiveness. (n.d.). British Columbia Institute of

Technology. https://www.bcit.ca/files/ltc/pdf/ja_teacheffect.pdf

Bovell, M. (2014, February 4). Using student assessment to improve teaching. Australian
Council for Educational Research (ACER). https://rd.acer.org/article/using-student-
assessment-to-improve-teaching

Marshall, K. (2018). In praise of assessment (done right). Marshallmemo.

https://marshallmemo.com/articles/Assessment%20March%202018.pdf