assessing without levels david thomas & alan gothard
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Assessing Without Levels
David Thomas & Alan Gothard
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Why assess?
To answer three questions:
1. Where am I?2. Where am I going?3. How do I get there?
(Dylan Wiliam)
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Ever feel like this?
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Today’s Secret Teacher
• “We’re confused by complicated grading.Have pity on us and our silly muddling of levels and key stages etc. We know we should grasp that a 3c is just below the expected attainment level in year 4, but some of us did O-levels and still have to count secretly on our fingers to match ages and year groups.”
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What advice would you give these students?
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How can you assess without levels?
1. Write your perfect curriculum2. Check if students understand it
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A better system
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Three principles
• Break the curriculum down• Define it with questions• Use analogue data
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Break the curriculum down...
• …into clearly defined chunks that students need to understand and remember, eg:– Adding and subtracting decimals– Solving linear equations– Index laws (1)
• About 15-20 per year• Each one of these will be assessed separately
• Everything will be built around these, so make sure you’ve got the split right. There’s a balance between giving lots of detail and being too complicated
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Define it with questions
• Objectives in a curriculum mean nothing in isolation– Assessment defines the curriculum
• What does “find percentages of amounts” mean?• You need to develop your curriculum and assessment
together
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Assessment defines curriculum
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Use analogue assessment
Model 1• Give students assessments• Use a combination of these and teacher judgment to record
“Yes” or “No” for whether a student understands
Model 2• Give students assessments• Record their scores. Share these with staff, students and
parents
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Use analogue assessment
• Understanding is not binary, and should not be reduced to a binary measure. This oversimplifies learning and discourages growth mindsets
• Binary assessment creates one high-stakes threshold around which all effort centres
• Giving out actual scores, with benchmarks (e.g. median, on-track for C/A), is more meaningful and less distortionary
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The WA System
• The KS3 curriculum is broken down into discrete topics, with 15-20 per year
• Each topic is assessed with an in-class quiz, an end-of-term test and homeworks
• A weighted average of these three give an overall percentage for each topic
• Percentage scores are reported home on a termly basis, with a recommendation of what independent study to do next
• Teachers have termly data review meetings to look at actions from data
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The WA System
What Went Well• Laser-like accuracy in
assessment• All interventions tailored by
topic with ease• Reports lead to action –
parents love them• No hiding from poor
performance
Even Better If• Intelligent spacing of
assessments• Storage and retrieval
quizzes• VLE
• Our software was ready!
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Planning Exercise
• Collectively we’re going to write a Year 7 curriculum• This will be shared with everyone by email next week, for use
in your schools
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Data Meeting
• You’re going to meet the class teacher to discuss their data• What will you ask/say to improve the progress of this class?