10 Tips For Great Assessment

Assessment is a part of human nature. We assess on a daily basis without even realising it: assessing the dangers of crossing the road; assessing whether we have time to sit for coffee of whether to have a take-out; assessing whether we need to take an umbrella. It's no different in education.

When teachers go through he training process they are taught about the importance of assessment and the differences between formative and summative assessment. In fact, this is drummed into us from day one right through to the day we qualify and beyond. 

Assessment is an integral part of education but is a topic that sparks much debate. What are the benefits and drawbacks to assessment? What is its purpose? What effects does it have on the child? Love it or hate it, it's here to stay! 

My 10 tips below will help you to make 2018 a great year for assessment.

1.  Use technology
Technology is fun and students love it! Be creative about how you set assessments - try  Powerpoint slideshows, internet research, form filling tools, apps etc. Technology is also a much faster way of recording assessments than filling out paper forms. You can save paper, and save time. Technology will also give you more options for recording and storing evidence, and makes it easier to share your assessments with others.

2.  Think about location
You should be assessing at every opportunity, not just on "assessment day". Assessment should be something that embeds seamlessly into the process of learning, rather than an extra task on the ‘to do’ list. Assessing children as they learn can have a direct and immediate impact. It will also save you time, as you won’t be putting off assessment until later!

3.  Use a framework to ensure progress
A clear framework will make it easier for you to see each child’s next steps, and to set appropriate targets. Curricular targets can then be set to move pupils on in their learning as opposed to setting a general target score.

4.  Track pupil progress
Regular tracking highlights gaps in learning, and brings to your attention more quickly those students who may be struggling or falling behind. It’s a good idea to track and compare groups of children who have similar needs or who are vulnerable. This will help you to plan interventions, set meaningful targets and differentiate your lesson plans.

5.  Match it to your curriculum
Formative assessment is an important tool to help you to teach and support pupils to learn. Assess only those things that tell you something useful. The most relevant formative assessment will highlight the areas of your curriculum that are strong, and those that need more coverage or resources.

6.  Record evidence
Evidence is important to back up your judgements and to share for moderation purposes. This could include examples of pupils’ work, photos, videos and sound recordings. Parents also love to see their child’s achievements, so multi-media evidence is a great way to engage them.

7.  Be clear on your progress measures
Moderation is important to ensure that there is consistency in assessment across the school. Are you all singing off the same hymn sheet? Does everyone know how to recognise "working towards", "on target" and "exceeding"? Making sure that there is shared understanding helps maintain smooth progression between year groups. And your bank of evidence comes in handy here to support your judgement and to compare with others when moderating work.

8.  Make it easy to share
Summative data is usually easily accessible as this is mostly comprised of National Test results and other formal tests such as reading tests, phonics checks, spelling checks etc. Occasionally you may be asked to show your formative assessment alongside your summative data (Ofsted, Estyn, Senior Leaders, Governors, Local Authority etc.). Would you be able to find and show them what they’re looking for quickly and easily? This is another area where using technology may help. Sharing assessments with students is also important: they need to know how they are performing, where they need to be and how to get there.

9.  Communicate with students
Make sure that your students understand what is expected from them and how they can achieve it. Giving children very clear lesson objectives, learning outcomes, specific targets and descriptions of their next steps will help to motivate them along the way. They should also be given opportunities to self-assess and peer assess so that they take ownership of their own progress.

10. Link formative assessment to everything you do
Use a good tracker to link formative assessment to everything you do

I love to make assessment fun for my students. The key is to come up with activities that students enjoy and where they don't realise that they are being assessed - a bit like hiding the veg in creative ways for children who refuse to eat their greens! I can't wait to try out my newest resource that I have been working on over Christmas - the "Big Idea Challenge Relay". Children get to work on an answer for thirty seconds before moving on to the next question. They then get an opportunity to self-assess or peer assess their answers. The activity is fun and fast paced, and children love the freedom to move around the classroom on the given signal and the competitiveness. 

This is a great way of testing prior knowledge before introducing a new topic and assessing how much they have learned at the end of the topic - can students beat the score they got first time round?

 

You can try out "The Big Idea Relay Challenge - Seasons" for half price until Friday 5th January. If you do, please leave me a comment with some feedback. The links below will take you to my TPT store, TES store and Facebook Store respectively.

          

FREEBIE - Tell Me A Story

Oral Storytelling

                                       

Teaching EAL (ESL) children can be a mixed bag. With over 120 kids every week, it's a mammoth job to identufy their individual needs and give them all individual learning targets. But it's all done - phew! Until the end of this half term, that is - then it all starts over again...

In my planning I try to pick up the three main threads of language teaching - speaking and listening, reading and writing. It's difficult to fit all of this in when I sometimes only see a child for 30 minutes each week... So I plan on a two-week cycle basis. Speaking and listening is a focus every week, with lots of oral vocabulary and sentence work. Every other week I alternate between a reading activity and a writing acivity, differentiated to the level of each child.

What has become glaringly obvious to me is the importance of oral storytelling.  Reading to children is a huge part of school life in children's early education, and then, sadly, it peters out... Often they don't get read to at home, and bedtime stories are few and far between.

Children LOVE being read to, especially if the story is accompanied by silly voices and perhaps a few well-chosen props. As my children are not big on writing yet (they are still acquiring language, and those who can write often prefer very short matter-of-fact sentences), I decided to focus this week on oral storytelling.

I used the story of The Gingerbread Man, but any simple traditional tale will do. I told the story to my groups of children, to a range of reactions. The facial expressions were priceless! Wide-eyed with surprise when the gingerbread man jumped out of the oven, and shocked when the fox gulped him down. They joined in eagerly with the chorus "Run, run as fast as you can! You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man!"

It was fantastic! But how could I assess their understanding of the story? Well, usually we use boring old comprehension exercises, but that ovbiously wouldn't work with these children, And I didn't want to spoil the moment with lots of writing.

Now I don't know if you ever use story maps, but I tried it with a group of 7 year olds. With a story in French.... And they learned it within three lessons - and were all able to stand up in assembly in front of the whole school and their parents, and retell the story perfectly - in the most amazing French! This week I used a story map to support the gingerbread man story, and it worked its magic again. Not only was it helpful to the children while I was telling the story, but it served as a visual reminder when they came to retell it themselves. I asked them to tell me about the story as they understood it - they could either use pictures like my story map, or they could have a go at writing their own account. I recorded some children telling the story orally. Perfect!

To help them a bit more, I drew up a little record that they could easily understand. It also helps me to assess how much they understood. You can use this record with any children - it's not just for EAL (ESL) children, although it was made with them in mind. You can get your own FREE copy from my TN store by clicking the picture. It is also available in my TPT store. I hope you find it useful. Let me know what you think.

A wonderful day had by all - and Cool KWL charts

Morning all. My birthday officially ended, I can now concentrate on more important matters, like getting over the fact that I'm gettting old...! Age has never bothered me before - it's always been just a number. But this time it mattered. As you do when you reach a certain point in your life, I  spent the most part of last week taking stock of what I've done with my life, what I've achieved (and not achieved) and how to make things better - all the things most people think about when they make New Year Resolutions. I guess it doesn't help that in my mind I seem to be going backwards instead of forwards - I gave up a permanent contract so don't now have a reliable source of income, and although subbing definitely has it's plus points, I'm finding it a little difficult to handle the insecurity - it's all a little unsettling, and I don't "do" unsettled.... So, what have I got to show for the last 46 years? I really am very lucky in a lot of respects - I have a wonderfully supportive family, my 98 year old nan is still with us, I live in the most beautiful part of the world, I have been given a great education, I have my health and I have been blessed with a beautiful, intelligent 17 year old daughter. I have been given the opportunity to do a job that I love (albeit on an ad hoc basis...), to shape young minds, to laugh with children and cry with them as well as educate them. I really am a very lucky girl... My resolution for the coming year - to count my blessings every day and never forget that life is a wonderful adventure, whatever stage of the journey we're at.

Sunday sermon over, I've been working on a set of KWL charts for you. I don't know how many of you use KWL charts in the classroom, but used regularly they really are a great tool both for the children and for you. They help children understand what they know about something - it doesn't matter if they know nothing because they also focus their minds on what they want to learn. At the end of the unit of study, they can revisit their KWL chart and fill in the third column, what they learned. This is great for us as teachers, because we can assess how much learning has taken place. KWL charts are a fun way of assessing learning - why not give them a try if you don't already? I have others in the pipeling, but please could you leave me a note with suggestions for things you'd like to see on KWL charts.

Dydd Sul hapus - Happy Sunday!