Teaching and learning MFL
Assessment
Papers & recommended reading | Editorial reviews | Tasks for trainees
Focus
The aim of this section is to engage the student teacher with the notion
of assessment as a formative tool whose skilled use can enhance the learner's
experience and inform the teacher's design of the study programme. To achieve
this will involve careful analysis of the complex relationship between purpose,
form and use of assessment materials, what constitutes informal and formal
assessments, ease of their use, and particularly of the challenges associated
with providing meaningful and actionable formative feedback to the learners.
As a result of such study, it is expected the student teacher emerge with
an enhanced idea of whom, when, how and why to assess and an appropriately
critical view of the reliability and fairness of the process, its impact
on teaching and learning methods and strategies, and an awareness of ongoing
research.
Study of this topic has the potential to address aspects of the following very wide range of QTS standards, depending on the trainer’s particular emphases:
| Professional attributes | |
| Relationships with children and young
people |
Q1, Q2 |
| Frameworks |
Q3 |
| Personal professional development | Q7, Q8, Q9 |
| Professional knowledge and understanding | |
| Teaching and learning |
Q10 |
| Assessment and monitoring | Q11, Q12, Q13 |
| Subjects and curriculum |
Q14, Q15 |
| Literacy, numeracy and ICT |
Q17 |
| Achievement
and diversity |
Q18, Q19, Q20 |
| Health and well-being | Q21 (a) (b) |
| Professional skills | |
| Planning | Q22, Q23, Q24 |
| Teaching | Q25 (a) (b) (c) (d) |
| Assessing, monitoring and giving feedback | Q26 (a) (b), Q27, Q28 |
| Reviewing teaching and learning | Q29 |
Tasks for trainees
Group discussion
Identify the major points and forms of formal assessment your pupils will
experience. What aspects of your, and their, performance will require thorough
training and review in order that they perform to their maximum potential?
With reference to samples of pupils’ oral or written work, discuss exactly
what you will say and write to them in order that they may act on your comments
to improve their attainment performance. You will need to follow a two-stage
framework; identification of WHAT the pupils need to address, and explicit
detail as to HOW they proceed. Articulating which of these two stages was
more challenging? Can you say why?
Observation focus
Make a note each time the class teacher carries out what you identify as
informal assessment, either of the learning of an individual, sub-groups
or of the whole class. What did the informal assessment tell the teacher?
Compare your view with his or hers after the lesson if possible.
Ask the class teacher if you may view the pupils’ exercise books. What
sort of thing are the pupils told about their work via the teacher’s comments?
Can you identify any improvement in later work in terms of what the teacher
has written?
Check your planning
To what extent does any one of your lesson plans for this week reflect the
fact that you have incorporated your reaction to an assessment? This can
either have been INFORMAL or FORMAL, and can have been of INDIVIDUAL pupils
or the WHOLE CLASS. Write your analysis as an appendix to the plan and file
it. Did your reaction to the assessment incorporate WHAT the pupil(s) needed
to look at, AND HOW they might go about it?
