What is Good Assessment For Learning (AfL)?
From Chief Inspector of OFSTED – Christine Gilbert 2007,
5 Key Strategies
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Questioning – engineering effective discussions, questions and learning tasks to elicit evaluation of learning
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Feedback- moving learners forward with oral and written feedback
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Shared Learning Expectations – share with students the learning outcomes of the lesson and share the success criteria for the expectations
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Self Assessment – activating students as the owners of their own learning
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Peer Assessment – activating students as resources for one another
How Do We Assess?
Assessment can occur both formally and informally. It can be by the teacher or student. It incorporates a wide variety of techniques as we do not see assessment as a “bolt on” part of a scheme of work but an integral part developing students into self-learners.
- Formal assessment – occurs through class work, coursework, homework and practical work of identified pieces of work for assessment and tracking.
- Informal assessment – occurs through dialogue between students and teacher, student and student, observation and mentoring.
- Peer / self-assessment – occurs through judgements made on criteria for success for each given task. This may be formally through review sheet or informally. 50 % of all Key Assessments/portfolio components will be structured as peer or self assessment activities.
How Can We Achieve Consistency?
For assessment to be worthwhile and value to both students and teachers it must be consistent.
This is achieved by:
- Agreed criteria of success for tasks/schemes of work. All work chosen for assessment and tracking activities will be assessed using National Curriculum or GCSE levels.
- Agreed departmental schemes of work identifying assessment procedures and tasks.
- Moderation of practical and written work.
- Portfolio of work for Programme’s of Work to reflect grade. (This may be a variety of formats, e.g. written, audio, pictorial, 3D)
- Marking –Assessment pieces will always be assessed using L-level, T- target, S- strategy; other work will be marked to support literacy, numeracy and AfL. No work should be left for more than two weeks without marking for support. Students are expected to respond to the marking in order to process information to improve, this needs to be evidenced in work available for scrutiny. For example you might a personal response to the comments made, or any evidence that if you have comment on something that needs improving or amending that those things have been addressed at that point. This will obviously require you to allow student sometime to reflect and respond to the marking you have done.
What Evidence Do We Keep?
Records of Assessment for each scheme of work should be recorded on the
Department Tracking Spreadsheet, under the agreed heading. There should be a standard procedure for each department (each member of the department should input the required information on the spreadsheet according to department agreement) for the recording of assessment on the school assessment database which should be regularly up-dated according to the departmental timeframe. Staff will have to input a grade or level on to the whole school monitoring system (START). This is the grade or level that the student achieved over the period of time from the last start based on evidence collected from portfolio components. For all year groups this will take place at least 3 times a year (see START calendar). The timings of the input will depend on the year group.
Monitoring
Monitoring will be through:
- Departmental data analysis.
- Whole school data analysis ( cohort based)
- standardisation activities.
- Subject Leader planner check which will include checks of database.
- Student voice activities relating to assessment
Reviewing
Review is a valuable process for both student and teacher as it enables reflection of the learning that has occurred. Students
Each scheme of work should have built in time for review. This is part of the learning process as well as final activity. At this time students have the opportunity to be involved in assessing their performance and setting targets. After the START input on the half term, the class teacher and the student will verbally discuss progress and negotiate strategies for improvement (this is called the Individual Achievement Plan IAP).
