This document discusses assessing young learners. It begins by asking the reader to reflect on what defines a young learner in terms of age range and characteristics. Assessment is described as an integral part of instruction that provides feedback on learning goals, student progress, and teaching effectiveness. The document outlines key concepts like evaluation, assessment, and testing and explains the purposes of assessment as diagnostic, for setting standards, and evaluating progress. It details types of assessment including diagnostic, benchmark, formative, and summative assessments. Principles of assessment discussed are validity, reliability, and fairness.

1. ASSESSING
YOUNG
LEARNERS

2. YOUNG LEARNERS
 Think about the young learners around you, then try to reflect on
the following
 What is the age range of young learners?
 What are their characteristics?
 Watch this video, then re-think the previous questions.

3. WATCH THIS VIDEO

4. ASSESSMENT
 Assessment is an integral part of instruction, as it determines whether or not
the goals of education are being met.
 Assessment affects decisions about grades, placement, advancement,
instructional needs, and curriculum.
 Assessment inspire us to ask these hard questions:
 Are we teaching what we think we are teaching?
 Are students learning what they are supposed to be learning?
 Is there a way to teach the subject better, thereby promoting better
learning?

5. KEY CONCEPTS IN ASSESSMENT
• Evaluation refers to a broader notion than assessment and refers to
a process of systematically collecting information in order to make
a judgement.
• Assessment is concerned with pupils’ learning or performance and
thus provides one type of information that might be used in
evaluation
• Testing is a particular form of assessment, that is concerned with
measuring learning through performance

6. WHY DO WE NEED ASSESSMENT?
Provides diagnostic feedback:
 What is the student's knowledge base?
 What is the student's performance base?
 What are the student's needs?
 What has to be taught?
Helps educators set standards for expected performance:
 What performance demonstrates understanding?
 What performance demonstrates knowledge?
 What performance demonstrates mastery?

7. WHY DO WE NEED ASSESSMENT?
Evaluates progress:
 Teaching progress:
 How is the student doing?
 What teaching methods or approaches are most effective?
 What changes or modifications to a lesson are needed to help the student?
 Student’s performance progress:
 What has the student learned?
 Can the student talk about the new knowledge?
 Can the student demonstrate and use the new skills in other projects?

8. TYPES OF ASSESSMENT
Diagnostic assessment:
 Occurs at the beginning of the teaching/learning cycle.
 This type of assessment will provide the teacher with:
 understanding of the prior knowledge and skills a student brings to the
learning cycle.
 the strengths and specific learning needs of an individual or groups of
students in relation to the expectations that will be taught.

9. TYPES OF ASSESSMENT
Benchmark Assessment:
 Used to measure academic progress of large groups of students.
 Ideally, the results of a benchmark exam help teachers understand
what lessons they need to reteach, and which students need extra
support.
 Benchmark exams act as a “preview” to how a class, school, or
district will perform on standardized tests or high stack
summative exams.
It’s important to note that the terms “benchmark exam” and “interim
assessment” are used interchangeably.

10. TYPES OF ASSESSMENT
Formative assessment:
 aims to provide immediate insights to guide on-going teaching and learning.
 Gathering actionable insights and offering immediate results that lead to
instant intervention or instructional adjustments to better suit student learning.
 Ideally, it gives feedback to both teachers and learners.

11. TYPES OF ASSESSMENT
Summative Assessment :
 Evaluate learning and document how much information was retained at the
end of a designated period of learning (e.g. unit, semester, or school year).
 Help to determine students’ grade which is used for accountability of schools,
students, and teachers
 Higher stakes than other assessment forms

12. TYPES OF ASSESSMENT & THEIR TOOLS
12
• Pre-test
• Interviews with tasks
• Project to be done before
starting
Pre-assessment
What do you know ?
• Observation
• Tasks
• Quizzes
Formative
What are you learning
?
• Tests
• Projects
• Presentation
Summative
What have you
learned ?

13. PRINCIPLES OF ASSESSMENT

14. • Concerns with how far an assessment assesses what it claims
to.
• If an assessment omits some aspects of what is being
assessed, its validity can also be reduced.
• To make sure an assessment is as valid as possible, we need
to think very carefully about:
• what exactly we want to assess,
• what exactly the proposed assessment will assess
• what can be claimed from the outcomes of the assessment.
VALIDITY

15. • It measures how well a test or assessment assesses what it
claims to. “Would the assessment produce the same results if it
were taken by the same pupils on different occasions or if the
same test or assessment was scored by different people?”
• Reliability is increased by being very explicit about instructions
to pupils and in scoring. i.e. Having teachers mark consistently
in the same way.
RELIABILITY

16. FAIRNESS
• Requires that children are given plenty of chances to show what
they can do and that their language learning is assessed through
multiple methods.
• Types of questions, test items or assessment tasks should also
be familiar to pupils if they are to show their ability to best
advantage