Designing for Formative Assessment: A Key to Improving Learning for Multilingual Learners

Instructional materials that strategically embed formative assessment of BOTH language and learning opportunities and teacher guidance throughout lessons and units support multilingual learners' ability to learn the language related to the academic content they are learning.

Formative assessment is a critical key to improving learning and can be used effectively with multilingual learners who come to the classroom with different strengths and assets. (EN 1) What is formative assessment? How and why does it work? How can content developers design lessons for formative assessment of content and language?

Formative assessment refers to a range of practices used to obtain evidence of learning to inform ongoing instruction and to provide multilingual learners with opportunities to learn the language needed to engage with academic content. These practices help teachers and students determine the next steps to keep content and language learning moving forward.