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Bear in mind that any written assessment will test your learners’ knowledge of English as much as it is testing their knowledge of a subject or an area of skill. If you are working with a class that has lots of children with EAL, or if you work with pupils who have specific types of SEND, then you may well need to adapt the tests you set, or give additional support so that they are able to access them. For instance, you might read the questions out loud to some learners, or offer a translated text. It could be that you even need to offer some of your pupils the chance to opt out of an assessment, or to complete it with individual support. Finding There is no point in replicating work that has already been done. It may well be that you can find a suitable assessment without needing to design your own, or that you can adapt something that someone else has already made. You can source ready-made assessments from various places, including: • in a textbook that you have been using with the learners in class, or one that covers the area you have been studying in a similar way to your lesson plans; • from a fellow class teacher within the same year group • online (although make sure that you source these from reputable organisations and check them for content before using them with your learners); • in past papers from exams such as SATs. Designing There will be times when you feel that your best bet is to create an assessment of your own. Perhaps you want to test for something specific, and you can’t find a template that matches it, or maybe the range of attainment in your class is too wide for a premade assessment to work. When you design your own assessments, remember to: • ensure that the instructions are clear and unambiguous. Just as giving instructions in class is a bit of an art form, so too is writing clear test instructions; • be very clear about the timing of the test. How long will the learners have to complete it as a whole, and what might this indicate for how long they should spend on each answer? It can be tricky to strike a balance between some children finishing very early and others having enough time to complete the test. It is worth considering whether, if the assessment is easy enough for some pupils to finish it early, you are really testing for the same thing when other learners need lots of extra time on top; • make sure that the wording of questions is clear and simple. For instance, ensure that you steer clear of idiomatic language that might confuse those with EAL; • consider setting easier questions at the start of the test, and gradually increasing the difficulty. This will help ensure that all your learners set off on a positive track; • think ahead about scoring and what form this will take; will you use marks, percentages, grades or a mixture? Are you going to give partial credit for a partially correct answer? Are you going to give credit for showing working out? • consider asking a colleague to check the assessment over for you. They might well spot issues, confusions or pitfalls that you hadn’t noticed. If your assessment is designed to be objective (i.e. to lead to a yes/no answer), then the following tips should help you design it effectively: • are you 100 per cent sure that what you are asking is not subjective and based on opinion? For instance, in a subject such as grammar, definitive answers can be tricky, because grammar changes over time, and because it is partly about interpretation; • phrase your questions so that there is only one best and ‘correct’ answer. This can be surprisingly hard to do; • make sure that you randomise the position of the correct answer when using multiple choice questions. For instance, varying whether it falls as A, B, C or D on alternate questions; • for clarity of communication, phrase your questions in a positive way, rather than using negatives, such as ‘which one is not an example of x’. When we understand what individual learners know and can do, and how they might build on their learning, we put ourselves in the best possible position to support and challenge them. TP Sue Cowley is an author and early years teacher. The sixth edition of her book, The Ultimate Guide to Adaptive Teaching (£20, Bloomsbury), is out now. AS S E S SMENT S P E C I A L www.teachwire.net | 53