1. Assessment for Learning
INSET Jan 09

4. of
for

6. 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.”

7. Reasons Grades Motivation
Focus on improvement > greater satisfaction
Active pupil involvement > engagement > independent learning

8. Four main strands Questioning Feedback Sharing success criteria
Self and peer assessment

9. “Questions are the laser of human consciousness”
Questioning
“Questions are the laser of human consciousness”

10. 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

11. 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

12. 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?

13. Effects of different forms of assessment (comments, grades and both)
Overall improvement after 2 lots of feedback +5 +4 +3 +2
Comments and grades
Change in marks +1
Grades
Comments
Butler, R, (1988) ‘Enhancing and undermining intrinsic motivations: the effects of task-involving and ego-involving evaluation on interest and performance’. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 58, 1-14 -1 -2 -3 -4 -5
Butler, 1988

14. Comment and grade group
What they recalled
Comment and grade group
Comments group

15. “If you are going to grade or mark a piece of work, you are wasting your time writing careful diagnostic comments.”
Wiliam D. (1999) 'Formative Assessment in Mathematics. Part 2: Feedback‘.  Equals: Mathematics and Special Educational Needs, vol 5, no 3, 8-11.
Wiliam, 1999

16. 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

17. 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 > greater independence

18. 4. Self and peer assessment

19. 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

20. 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      

21. “We remember 90% of what we teach”
Peer assessment
“We remember 90% of what we teach”

22. 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

23. Strategies for self and peer assessment
Two stars and a wish?
“Traffic lighting”
Asking “who marked work better than their own?”
Pupil as “reporter”

24. 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

25. 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.”