Assessment for Learning and Development

Considering approaches that make provision effective for all learners

Session aims

• To develop ideas about opportunities for formative assessment within planning and teaching.

• To extend understanding of Assessment for Learning.

There is a cycle

• Start by recognising what they know already

• You facilitate new/expanded knowledge and understanding

• You evaluate their ‘receiving’ (and your ‘giving’)

• You plan where to go next in their learning

(Detailed) Planning opportunities for learning What do I want the children to learn?

Effective teaching Teacher employing

a range of strategies facilitating

opportunities to learn.

Sensitive and focused

assessment

Feedback to learner

Subject research Reflection and consideration of ‘where next’

What do learners & teachers need to know?

• Learners need to know: – where they are in their learning

– where they are going

– how to get there

• Teachers need to know – where students are in their learning

– what to do about it

Assessment for Learning Strategies

• How are you going to check to see if learning is taking place? For example, are you going to provide a short peer assessment moment, where pupils use the given criteria to make judgments about their partner’s work?

• Are you going to ask for responses from all, or target your chosen pupils for that lesson who represent your ‘working towards’, ‘achieving’, or ‘working beyond’? Are you going to use layers of questioning to search for deeper understanding?

• How will you extract the information you need, to know how to proceed? AfL will guide your decision about provision

Assessment for learning 10 Principles

1. is part of effective planning

2. focuses on how students learn

3. is central to classroom practice

4. is a key professional skill

5. has an emotional impact

6. affects learner motivation

7. promotes commitment to learning goals and assessment criteria

8. helps learners know how to improve

9. encourages self-assessment

10. recognises all achievements

The Four basic Elements of AfL:

• Sharing Learning Goals

• Effective Questioning

• Self and peer evaluation

• Effective feedback

You need to be able to utilise these

Sharing Learning objectives

How might you present these LOs to children:

1) To explore narrative order and identify and map out the main strategies of a story

2) To be able to use and apply doubling and halving.

3) To recognise numbers to 10.

Supporting children to become self-evaluative

• Explain purpose

• Display a range of self-evaluative questions for the end of lessons

• Model possible answers children might have to the self-evaluative questions: ‘I think some of you might say you’re most pleased with . . .’ etc.

• After modelling, choose one question for the end of a lesson and link it with the learning intention: ‘What are you most pleased with about understanding pushing and pulling forces?

• Allow thinking time

• Use a variety of approaches: whole class, paired or group

• Avoid getting children to write self-evaluations (their thinking may be reduced to what is easy to write)

(Clarke, 2001)

Peer assessment

Key features • Pupils provide feedback on

others’ work.

• Can be a bridge between teacher assessment and self assessment

• A stage in the process of helping pupils become confident and skilled in self-assessment

Peer assessment for learning

• Asking pupils to look at

examples of other pupils’ work

can help them to understand

what was required from a task

and to assess the next steps

they might need to take

• Can also help pupils understand

the different approaches they

could have taken to the task

Key questions...

If you wanted to implement peer assessment in a particular class, what forward planning would be required?

How would you set about preparing pupils so that they could assess each other’s work effectively?

Consider the likely concerns of pupils and parents with regard to peer assessment.

How would you reassure them about the use of peer assessment?

GIVING FEEDBACK

Verbal

Written

Non-verbal

'The most powerful single moderator that enhances achievement is feedback'

[J. Hattie]

Lesson Evaluation

• Firstly, did the children learn what you hoped they would learn? If they did, what helped them? If they didn’t, why not?

• Secondly, what might you need to provide next lesson that extends or presents the learning in a different way?

• Thirdly, did you ‘perform’ well against your personal targets? How does this inform your own learning and personal plan of action

Remember the ongoing cyclical relationship between planning, teaching and assessment

Assessment of a child's needs and strengths

should be at the heart of the

teaching process

Assessment for learning and formative assessment in action?

Imagine that you are observing the lesson and

evaluating the teacher’s and children’s use of assessment for learning – evaluate the lesson in terms of assessment methods and ideas. Consider the teacher’s role

Sample lesson. http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Formative-

Assessment-1-6083012/