Assessment for Learning

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Assessment for Learning

• INSET Jan 09

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From Inside the Black Box by P Black D William

• Assessment becomes formative assessment when the
  evidence is actually used to adapt the teaching
  and learning work to meet the pupils needs.

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Reasons

• Grades
• Motivation
• Focus on improvement gt greater satisfaction
• Active pupil involvement gt engagement gt
  independent learning

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Four main strands

1. Questioning
2. Feedback
3. Sharing success criteria
4. Self and peer assessment

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Questioning

• Questions are the laser of human consciousness

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1. Questioning

• Types of question
• Who answers questions and how?
• Wait time (2 Wait times)
• No hands up
• Think, pair, share
• Mini whiteboards
• Other strategies to involve more/all pupils

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2. Feedback

• Marking is usually conscientious but often fails
  to offer guidance on how work can be improved.
  In a significant minority of cases, marking
  reinforces under-achievement and
  under-expectation by being too generous or
  unfocused. Information about pupil performance
  received by the teacher is insufficiently used to
  inform subsequent work.
• General report on secondary schools OFSTED 1996

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2. Feedback

• Oral or written
• Praise current achievement
• Next steps
• Should cause thinking to take place
• Procedures to close the gap
• Types of comments which lead to improved
  learning? Questions, prompts, a limited number?

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Effects of different forms of assessment
(comments, grades and both)
Overall improvement after 2 lots of feedback
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Comments and grades
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Change in marks
Grades
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Comments
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-2
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Butler, 1988
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What they recalled
Comment and grade group
Comments group
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If you are going to grade or mark a piece of
work, you are wasting your time writing careful
diagnostic comments.
Wiliam, 1999
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Summary of formative feedback

• specific to the learning objectives
• show evidence of where pupils are now, what they
  have done well
• awareness of the desired goal
• some understanding of how to close the gap and
  how this will be demonstrated

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3. Sharing success criteria

• Making learning transparent
• Provide an overview the big picture
• Links between new and prior learning
• Shift from what to how
• Sharing learning objectives
• Make EXPLICIT what is usually IMPLICIT
• Share success criteria for tasks topics
• Exemplars
• Learning STRATEGIES gt greater independence

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4. Self and peer assessment
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4. Self and peer assessment

• Current thinking about learning acknowledges
  that learners must ultimately be responsible for
  their learning since no-one else can do it for
  them. Thus assessment for learning must involve
  students, so as to provide them with information
  about how well they are doing and guide their
  subsequent efforts.
• Assessment Reform Group 2000

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4. Self assessment

• In order for pupils to assess their own learning
  they need
• information about what they need to learn and how
  they will know they have been successful
• a sound understanding of what constitutes high
  quality work
• the skills and techniques to assess what they
  have achieved      

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Peer assessment

• We remember 90 of what we teach

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Strategies for self and peer assessment

• Can-do lists for each topic
• Target setting/pupil progress sheets
• Make pupils aware of criteria in advance
• Pupils develop the marking criteria (thus taking
  the secrecy out of marking)
• Immediate feedback all pupils involved and
  thinking
• Pupils set questions

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Strategies for self and peer assessment

• Two stars and a wish?
• Traffic lighting
• Asking who marked work better than their own?
• Pupil as reporter

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What might we do now?

• Model good practice (with a buddy?)
• Collaborate
• Questioning techniques as focus for our
  observations
• Plan appropriate assessment into schemes of work
• Incremental approach

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Final pause for thought

• Individual teachers can not right the wrongs of
  overbearing external assessment nor can they
  always help to form whole-school policy on
  assessment. However, they are able to change
  some practice slowly and effectively in their own
  classrooms so that, at least, they are causing no
  harm through their class assessment methods and
  possibly doing a great deal of good in the
  learning process.