ABSTRACT
Formative assessment is often referred to as the most important aspect of assessment, yet it is sometimes unclear what it is, and especially what it looks like in practice. Formative assessment of students’ work informs future teaching and learning by giving feedback to students and teachers. The term embraces a broad range of dayto-day assessment strategies: for example, whole-class question and answer sessions or marking students’ classwork. Formative assessment helps us to understand and make judgements about what students know, understand and can do, what their strengths, weaknesses and misconceptions are and what the next steps in their learning should be for them to make progress.
