What Should I Do Next? The Power of Formative Assessment

One of the most uncomfortable moments in teaching comes when we realise that something we thought learners had understood has not really been learned at all.

Massoumeh’s workshop on formative assessment in grammar teaching explored exactly this problem.

The key question was simple:

How do we know whether learners have really understood?

Massoumeh distinguished between two broad purposes of assessment.

Summative assessment looks back. It evaluates achievement, often through marks, grades or tests.

Formative assessment looks forward. Its purpose is to find out what learners understand now, identify gaps, and decide what to do next.

That distinction matters because the same technique can serve very different purposes.

A quiz can be summative if it contributes to a final grade.

But the same quiz can be formative if the teacher uses the results to decide whether to clarify, reteach, extend or move on.

The important question is not simply:

What assessment technique am I using?

It is:

What am I going to do with what I discover?

Collect evidence, interpret it, respond

Massoumeh presented formative assessment as a simple cycle:

collect evidence;

interpret what it shows;

decide on the next teaching move.

This makes assessment part of teaching rather than something that happens after teaching.

A quick chat-box response, mini-whiteboard activity, online quiz, peer check or short piece of writing can all reveal useful information.

But the evidence only becomes valuable when the teacher responds to it.

If two learners are struggling, perhaps they need targeted support.

If half the class is confused, perhaps the explanation or task needs revisiting.

If most learners have understood, the teacher may decide to move on or offer more challenging work.

The response depends on what the evidence actually shows.

One answer is rarely enough

An interesting discussion emerged around a grammar question where half the class answered incorrectly.

Should the teacher immediately reteach the grammar point?

Several participants challenged that idea.

Perhaps the question itself was unclear.

Perhaps learners misunderstood the vocabulary.

Perhaps they guessed.

Perhaps one item simply did not provide enough evidence.

The discussion highlighted an important principle: teachers need to be cautious about drawing conclusions too quickly.

Assessment is not only about collecting answers.

It is about interpreting them intelligently.

Peer assessment and learner involvement

The workshop also explored how learners can participate in assessment themselves.

Participants tried an activity in which they produced a sentence, exchanged it with a partner, used clear success criteria, gave feedback and then revised their original sentence.

This raised an important question:

Can learners give each other useful feedback without creating embarrassment or competition?

The discussion suggested that the answer depends largely on how the task is framed.

Peer feedback is more useful when learners are given clear criteria and when the focus is not simply on identifying what is wrong, but also on recognising what has been done successfully and suggesting ways forward.

Used well, this can make learners more aware of the learning process and more responsible for their own progress.

From “Did I teach it?” to “Did they learn it?”

Perhaps the strongest idea in the workshop came near the end.

Teachers can easily leave a lesson thinking:

“I covered the grammar.”

“I explained it.”

“I did the lesson.”

But formative assessment asks a different question:

Did they actually learn it?

That small shift changes the teacher’s role.

We stop seeing teaching as the delivery of content and start seeing it as an ongoing process of noticing, interpreting and responding.

A Teaching Artistry perspective

Teaching artistry is not only about creativity or engaging activities. It is also about professional judgement.

The teacher gathers evidence, notices patterns, resists jumping to conclusions and decides what learners need next.

The lesson is therefore not a fixed script.

It is something that evolves in response to the people in front of us.

Perhaps one of the most useful questions we can ask at the end of any lesson is not:

“Did I teach what I planned?”

but:

“What did my learners show me — and what should I do next?”