1. Self and Peer assessment

2. Formative assessment
Both self assessment and peer assessment are valuable forms of formative assessment.
Formative assessment should be used along side summative assessment to gather a picture of the ‘whole’ child in terms of assessment.
Self and peer assessment are important aspects of ‘assessment for learning’ practice. By assessing their own work and that of other students can help to develop deeper understanding of learning outcomes and of assessment criteria.
Research has shown that learners make more progress when they are actively involved in their own learning and assessment. Once fully embedded within lessons these forms of assessment strategy can be very effective in motivating learning.

3. Self assessment
Self-assessment “is the involvement of students in identifying standards and/ or criteria to apply to their work, and making judgments about the extent to which they have met these criteria and standards…..[it] means more than students grading their own work; it means involving them in the process of determining what is ‘good work’.
Boud, D. (1995) Enhancing Learning through Self-Assessment; Kogan Page; London

4. Peer assessment
‘Students use criteria and apply standards to the work of their peers in order to judge that work. Both self and peer assessment are “formative, in that it has beneficial effects on learning, but may also be summative, either in the sense of learners deciding that they have learned as much as they wished to do in a given area, or ….it may contribute to the grades awarded to the students”.
Boud and Falchikov (1989) in Falchikov, N. (2005) Improving Assessment Through Student Involvement: Routledge Falmer; Oxon

5. Dylan Wiliam

6. Top Tips 1. Have a clear assessment criteria
Make sure that you are clear what makes a piece of work successful. Keep your language factual; anything that is open to interpretation can complicate the process. In an art lesson, saying ‘you have used at least 3 different tones (highlight, mid-tone and shadow)’ is often easier for a student to understand than ‘effective use of tone’.
2. Consider developing the assessment criteria with students
Rather than just providing an assessment criteria, have the class get involved with creating it. This will get them to take ownership and they are likely to develop a much deeper understanding of how to make progress.
3. Use anonymous examples of work
I will often use an example from one class with another and will model – using the projector how to peer assess . It can alleviate stress and embarrassment.

7. Top Tips 4. Vary the work your students assess
Make sure they don’t always mark their neighbours work. Mix it up, laying the work out randomly on the desks before students come in means that they see something different each time. Direct who marks the work.
5. Model responses
If left to their own devices many students will just try to get away with writing “it’s really good” as their feedback. You must provide a clear framework to use. This can have a huge impact on the quality of their feedback and therefore their learning. Using a sentence starter such as “In order to improve you need to…. so that… ” ensures that students give specific examples of areas for improvement and explain them fully. For younger students consider printing out a sheet with boxes to tick.
6. Allow time to respond
Don’t use peer/self assessment as a plenary task right at the end of your lesson. In order for feedback to have proper impact students must have a chance to digest it and to make changes in response to it. Consider using assessment in the middle of the lesson - give them time to digest feedback and then act upon it.

8. Examples in English