5.5 Choosing Assessment Activities for a Lesson or Sequence

5.5 Choosing Assessment Activities for a Lesson or Sequence

Module 2 Part 1 asks candidates to choose "assessment activities appropriate to learners, aims and stages of learning". The wording matters. The exam is not asking what diagnostic, formative or summative assessment means, since that taxonomy belongs to 4.4; it is asking which activity a teacher should build into this plan for these learners at this point. Three filters decide it, and a fourth decides whether the choice survives a real timetable.

Filter One: Match the Activity to the Aim

Section 4.5 defines validity as a quality of an assessment instrument; here it works as a planning filter. An assessment activity is valid when it actually samples the ability named in the aim. This is the most productive idea in this part of the syllabus, because most wrong options in TKT assessment items are tasks that are perfectly good in themselves but measure the wrong thing.

A twenty-item multiple-choice grammar quiz cannot assess a fluency aim: it produces no connected speech, no hesitation data and no evidence of interaction, only recognition of forms. Conversely, a lively role-play cannot efficiently assess spelling, because nothing is written down; a two-minute dictation would do the job in a fraction of the time. Matching task to skill is the difference between an assessment activity and an activity that is merely enjoyable.

Filter Two: Match the Activity to the Stage of Learning

At the start of a course, the useful activities are placement and diagnostic: a short level test, a first piece of free writing, or a getting-to-know-you interview that doubles as a speaking sample. These set the assumptions for the first scheme of work. Mid-course, in-lesson checks and end-of-unit progress tests dominate, because their job is to steer teaching while there is still time to change it. At the end of a course, the activities are achievement-focused and report-focused: a final test aligned to the syllabus, a portfolio, or an exam-format mock.

Stage also operates within a single lesson. Checking during controlled practice calls for something instant, such as mini-whiteboards; checking at the end of a freer stage calls for something that captures extended output.

Informal In-Lesson Checks

These are written into the procedure column of a plan and cost almost no timetable time.

• Monitoring with an observation checklist. The teacher circulates with a class list and ticks target features as they are heard. It gives authentic evidence from real practice but only samples the pairs the teacher reaches.
• Mini-whiteboards. Every learner answers simultaneously and the teacher scans the room. Excellent for short, single-answer form checks; useless for anything longer than a sentence.
• Concept-check responses. These tell the teacher whether meaning has landed, but nothing about whether learners can produce the form under pressure.
• Hands-up or thumbs up/down. Fast and inclusive, but it collects only self-report, and learners who believe they understand are frequently wrong.
• Exit tickets. One question answered on a slip as learners leave. Gives a written record from every individual, and takes two minutes to sort into re-teach and move-on piles.
• Short oral drills. Reveal pronunciation and immediate accuracy, but nothing about spontaneous use.

Formal Activities in a Scheme of Work

Formal activities are scheduled in advance, sit on the scheme of work as dated entries, and usually produce a recorded mark: end-of-unit progress tests, timed writing under exam conditions, recorded speaking tasks, and dictations. Their placement in a sequence matters. A progress test belongs after the recycling and revision lessons, not immediately after the first presentation of new language; a timed writing belongs after the model text and the process-writing stages, otherwise it measures nothing except who already knew the genre.

Filter Three: Match the Activity to the Learners

Young learners need short, game-like, low-anxiety activities: picture-matching, listen-and-point, a colouring dictation, a sticker chart. Long written tests damage motivation and produce unreliable results. Exam-class teenagers need tasks in the format of their target exam, marked with the exam's own criteria, because familiarity with the rubric is itself part of the aim. Adult professionals need assessment that resembles their real-world use: a simulated client phone call or an email to a supplier, with feedback expressed in terms of workplace effectiveness rather than school marks.

Practicality Constraints

A valid activity that cannot be run is worth nothing. Section 4.5 introduces practicality as a quality of an assessment instrument; at the planning stage it becomes four concrete checks: time available in the lesson, class size (individual recorded speaking for forty learners will consume several lessons), marking load (thirty analytic rubrics is an evening's work, thirty gap-fills is fifteen minutes), and equipment such as recorders, headphones or printing. Practicality is why teachers often choose peer assessment or self-assessment checklists for the middle of a sequence and reserve teacher-marked tasks for the end.

Using the Results

Assessment only earns its lesson time if it changes the next plan. Evidence feeds three components directly. It confirms or corrects the assumptions at the top of the next plan. It supplies realistic anticipated problems, since a difficulty eighteen learners demonstrated yesterday is not a guess. And it justifies a re-teaching stage or a revised main aim: if most of the class lost marks on third-person -s, the next lesson opens with a short remedial presentation and controlled practice rather than moving on. Where only three or four learners struggled, the response is differentiation inside the next lesson rather than re-teaching the whole class, which is exactly the judgement Module 2 expects candidates to make.