2. LOMCE strongly recommends that students are
assessed in the classroom while they are
working. Thus, we should include formative
assessment in our formative units where the
students are assessed during the
teaching/learning process.
Classroom-based assessment, also called
‘informal’, ‘authentic’ or ‘alternative’, allows us to
track the ongoing progress of our students
regularly and provide real feedback of where
students are throughout the school year.
By using informal assessment, we can get
students’ specific problem areas, adapt
instruction and intervene earlier rather than later.
3. In order for classroom-based assessment to be
incorporated into our day-to-day plan, it has to
be practical and it has to adapt to our classroom
methodology. We don’t want complicated
assessment instruments that pose problems and
challenges in the classroom but those that help
us carry out the task easily and in a practical
way.
Today’s education systems all around the world
require that students are assessed during the
teaching-learning process.
In order to provide information about that, we will
concentrate on the four different skills and say
which ones are the most recommended in order
to assess the students in the classroom.
4. LISTENING
1. Dictation: Dictation is a great way to provide
informal assessment. We can choose to play a
recording or read something ourselves, from a
song, to a news item, a poem, a magazine ad,
money to practice figures, names to drill spelling,
appointments, flight schedules and telephone
numbers.
2. Summaries: Listen to a recording and write a brief
summary of the story or conversation.
3. Completion Tests: A fill-in-the-blanks exercise after
a recording.
What’s important in an informal listening test is that
teachers can correct it in class and provide feedback
to the students.
5. SPEAKING
1. Role-plays: Students role play an activity/exercise
and in our direct-observation sheet, notebook or
rubric, we take notes of the students’ performance.
2. Group Activities: Students discuss a topic and
have to express their views about it.
3. Debates: We split the class in two or make groups
and students have to position themselves in favor
or against a particular topic.
4. Pair-Work Interviews: Students interview each
other in pairs following a pattern.
Students should know they are being assessed,
some may perform worse in the knowledge that we
are assessing them others might try harder, but that’s
just what happens in everyday life.
6. READING
1. Jigsaw: Divide a text up and students in pairs or
groups have to tell the other about their part.
2. Collecting: Students read a text, answer questions
and we collect their answers.
7. WRITING
1. Quick Write: Students write for five minutes about
something they have listened to.
2. Short Essays: Set a topic for the class and
students have to write about it.
8. We cannot forget about the Portfolio as one of the
most useful classroom-based assessment tools for
the four skills.
