Formative assessment in a teacher's weekly rhythm

Assessment is often thought of as the test at the end of a unit. Formative assessment is a different thing: continuous observation during learning, whose purpose is to guide the next step, not to give a grade. It lives in a teacher’s week as small observations, not as one big effort.

The Finnish Education Evaluation Centre (Karvi) found that assessment practices vary from school to school and the same competence can produce a different grade in different schools (Atjonen et al. 2019). Formative assessment is one way to make assessment more even and fairer for the student, because feedback comes along the way rather than only at the end.

Small observations continuously, not one big test

The core of formative assessment is to ease the pressure of one big assessment by dividing it into many small ones. When you see every lesson where the group is, you have time to correct course before a misunderstanding takes root.

In practice this can be a short check at the end of the lesson, a couple of questions everyone answers, or a quick look at who moved forward and who did not. The observation does not have to be a grade. Its job is to tell you and the student what to practise next.

Feedback moves forward, not backward

The value of formative assessment is in feedback that says what to do next. “Four out of six correct” looks backward. “You already know the base form; next, practise the exceptions” looks forward. The latter guides the student; the former only states a fact.

There is also a question of the teacher’s time here. You do not have to give feedback on every task separately. Often it is enough to raise a couple of things that recur in the group and guide the whole group through them.

Link assessment to objectives and tasks

Assessment connects to objectives, not topics. If a task practises application, the assessment should also look at application, not just recall. The assessment criteria for basic education have been specified precisely for the sake of equity (Finnish National Agency for Education), and they also support formative assessment: they tell you what competence the tasks should practise.

This connects directly to differentiation. If you differentiate tasks into three levels but assess everyone by the same measure, a student who needs support may still feel they are failing. One way is to keep the core objective of the assessment the same but let the student show their competence at a different scope. This is covered in more detail in the differentiation guide.

How Bruukki helps

Bruukki does not give grades for you, and it should not. It helps make the tasks and materials that connect to objectives and assessment criteria. You can, for example, ask for short check questions on the unit’s topic, or different-scope ways to show the same competence. The AI suggests, you decide what you use and how you assess.

Where to start

You do not have to change everything at once. One way is to add one light check at the end of a lesson in a single unit and see what it tells you. Once the habit is familiar, you can make it part of your weekly rhythm. Formative assessment is not extra work. It is a way to see in time where teaching time is best directed.

If you want to try what tasks linked to objectives look like, try Bruukki for free. We are glad to receive teachers’ feedback, so tell us if something does not work.

Sources

• Atjonen, P. et al. (2019). “Että tietää missä on menossa”: oppimisen ja osaamisen arviointi perusopetuksessa ja lukiokoulutuksessa. Finnish Education Evaluation Centre, publications 7:2019.
• Finnish National Agency for Education. Assessment of learning and competence in basic education.

Read also: differentiation in language teaching without double the work and how to align your teaching materials with the curriculum.