Assessment of Transversal Skills in STEM is an Erasmus+ research project engaged with teachers and learners in schools across several European countries in helping them develop transversal skills. The project seeks to help teachers in the formative digital assessment of STEM learners’ work as they develop real-world, authentic STEM skills. But what are authentic skills? Where do real worlds exist? In this presentation, we give an overview of the project and an introduction to some tools for formative assessment in STEM. We go on to present some examples of student work in Sweden and Ireland, where students and teachers are working outdoors, drawing trees, and looking into recycling bins in sites of real-world activity. We hope to show that teaching itself is real and authentic activity and cannot be easily divorced or separated from some “real-world” of STEM.