Formative Assessment In Additional Professional Help

Formative assessment is a process, which includes joint determination of learning goals and criteria, constant monitoring andvaluating of progress, guidance into effective learning methods and adjustment of a teacher’s work. In Slovenia,formative assessment has already been implemented in teaching students with special needs – by detecting and defining difficulties, goal setting and evaluation, which provide advantage in understanding the essence of formative assessment and in its realisation. Quality feedback is one of the crucial steps in assessment of a student. Through Additional Professional Help, a student’s cognitive as well as social-emotional fields are wholly assessed. A teacher works with a student individually, so they are in constant interaction. This creates many possibilities for quality feedback, which allows the teacher and the student to assess and evaluate their work. Feedback often comes as ‘spontaneous learning’ as a part of good /suitable conversation with the student. The teacher leads this conversation and guides the student into extension of knowledge and skills. In implementing formative assessment into practice, I have striven to provide feedback on time – instantly and on first barriers – and often enough, not to draw us away from the intended learning. Feedback was very specific, useful and directed on learning work (expressions such as “Great!”, “You’re a good boy/girl”, “Nice!”, … were omitted). Moreover, I use various exit cards for self-reflection of the student’s work (at the end of a learning session the student answers questions about his/her work). These can be informative to the teacher, but also provide us an insight into the student’s way of thinking. In this way, teachers can constantly adjust their work and reassess, whether certain methods are suitable and effective for individual students. In my experience, it turns out that constant cooperation of the specialized professionalgroup, together with real and definite feedback truly lead to progress and knowledge expansion of students with special needs. The process of learning is more visible to students. The acquired skills also help them to gain knowledge in regular classes more easily.