How to Plan a Successful Lesson Series: Formal Assessments

Today is the last post for the series “How to plan a successful lesson plan”.  Today we will finish up with formal assessments.  We are finishing up with formal assessments because it is usually the last thing we do in a lesson and/or unit. 

We have:

1.    written a lesson plan backwards (to teach to our objective)

2.    learned the difference between the different assessments (because assessing is part of teaching)

3.    learned about the different types of informal lesson plans and when to use

and now we are going to talk about the different types of formal assessments and when to use them. 

Formal assessments can be defined as structured tests with a standardized measure or defined criteria, summarized from Scholastic website.  

Formal assessments tend to be the end of the chapter/unit test or the standardized tests normally given at the end of the school year by the state (US) or national department of education (Costa Rica). 

Types of formal assessments are:

• *Essay: Students write about a certain question, topic, or statement
• You can let the students know of the essay options before they take the test so they can prepare beforehand.  
• *Multiple-choice test: it can include the A, B, C, D choices as well as true or false and matching. 
• *Short answer exam: Short answer is one or two sentences
• Presentations (with rubric): In an English learning classroom, students give a variety of presentations-from oral reports to student created commercials.  
• The best way to measure these presentations is with rubrics.  Rubrics are set expectations of a task.  Rubrics are great for oral presentations, skits, book reports, art assignments, dialogues, etc. 
• RubiStar is a great website that provides you with a template to create your own rubric as well as a large database of teacher created rubrics. (I used it all the time while teaching in the States, and they do not know that I am promoting them here).
• Always allow the students to see the rubric before hand!
• Research (with a rubric): same as above

*All these types of formal assessments can be included on the same end of chapter/unit test as well as standardized tests. 

*Remember* when creating your formal test, grade the objectives you have taught in that unit. And grade according to the skill of that objective.  If it is a speaking objective, the student must speak as part of their final grade.  

Check back soon for more posts on classroom management and teaching English as a foreign language!