Assessment for Learning: from research to classroom practice

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Assessment for Learning from research to
classroom practice

• Chris Harrison
• Sally Howard
• Mary Doherty

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Formative Assessment

• This is classroom assessment which focuses on the
  learning as it is taking place and its function
  is to bring about improvement
• Both teachers and learners need to be involved
  but ultimately it is the learner who has to take
  action

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Giky Martables

• The protrubrences of the Giky Martables are
  perfunctory and enable them to search and easily
  locate their talinbangs. When the talinbangs are
  disard, they perform the ritual more often,
  sometimes in groups but more often singly or in
  pairs. They have even been known to excalibate
  the twigs and plants in their paths, leaving
  chaos in their wake. In early spring, if the
  temperatures start to rise, they bimimer their
  dresarwar, sometimes travelling large distances
  before they macoca and cafuffle in woods and
  hedges.

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Learning in Maths

• Whats 4 x 6?
• How can I make 24 by multiplying 2 numbers?
• Share your answers in groups of 3 and find FIVE
  ways of doing this
• 3 x 8 8 x 3

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AfL Activity

• Why was the Maths activity an AfL activity?
• What was the role of the teacher?
• What role did the learners play?
• What are the /- of activities like this one?

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Wynne Harlen Mary James
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Essential elements

• The quality of pupil-teacher interactions
• The stimulus and help for students to take active
  responsibility for their own learning
• Collaborative learning

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AfL Strategies

• These simply help teachers and learners get the
  3 essential elements in place in the classroom.
  Teachers select and adapt strategies that they
  feel will work with their classes.

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What Changes Will I need to make?

• Reflect on how well your pupils are learning at
  the moment
• Consider what you might change to help them learn
  better
• Decide which strategy(ies) might help them
  develop better learning behaviours
• Work on this for several weeks noting any changes
  in pupils learning (diary entries)
• Share ideas and developments with peers

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• Spend a few minutes reflecting on what you have
  tried since the last meeting ( you might want to
  read through your diary to do this)
• Discuss this with your partner. What worked? What
  didnt? Why did you try a particular strategy?
  How did the pupils respond? What would you do
  differently next time? Next step? What use you
  made of other resources?
• Now share your ideas with your family of schools.
  What is similar and what is different about your
  approach to the way other teachers have tried
  this? What can you learn from this? What would
  you tell other teachers who asked you what you
  did and why you did it the way you chose to?

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Music Video

• What are the learning behaviours of these Y7
  pupils like?
• What AfL strategies is this teacher using?
• How much information about their learning is the
  teacher picking up? What messages are the
  children picking up about their learning?
• What does the teacher need to focus on to make
  these AfL strategies work more effectively?

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Classroom assessment

• Four aspects
• Quality of questions
• Quality of feedback
• Sharing criteria with learners
• Self-assessment

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Essential elements

• The quality of pupil-teacher interactions
• The stimulus and help for students to take active
  responsibility for their own learning
• Collaborative learning

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Motivation cause or effect?
(Csikszentmihalyi, 1990)
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(No Transcript)
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Year One
Finished Product
Success Criteria
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Feedback Activity

• What do children and others say about feedback?
• You will need the Quotes sheet for this activity

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Effects of Feedback

• Kluger DeNisi (1996)
• Review of 607 effect sizes (12652 individuals)
• Average effect size 0.4 BUT stan
  dard deviation almost 1 40 of effect sizes
  were negative

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Kinds of FeedbackCanada

• 80 Y9 students learning major scales in music
• Experimental group 1 (EG1) given
• written praise
• list of weaknesses workplan -
  Experimental group 2 (EG2) given
• oral feedback
• nature of errors chance to correct
  errors
• Control group (CG)
• No feedback
• Boulet et al (1990)

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Balancing Demands
Formative Assessment
Summative Assessment
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FORMATIVE v SUMMATIVE

• Mainly about improvement
• Looks forward
• Favours descriptive feedback
• Informs on quality
• Can lead to improvements in learning

• Mainly about accountability
• Looks backwards
• Favours tests and scores
• Samples knowledge
• If overused can have -ve impact

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Negative effect of Summative

• Demotivates some learners and particularly low
  attainers
• Reduces the range of teaching strategies that are
  used which affects all children but particularly
  low attainers.
• Focuses learners on performance (getting better
  grades/next level) rather than learning
• Anxiety
• Testing, Learning Motivation - ARG 2002

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PACE project

• Longitudinal research followed a cohort for 8
  years
• After NC tests introduced, teachers own classroom
  assessment became more summative.
• Teachers increasingly focused on performance
  outcomes rather than the learning processes
• Pupils began adopting summative criteria in
  commenting on their own work
• (Pollard et al, 2000)

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For Feedback and Guidance

• Questions to ask yourself
• Do I need to give feedback .?
• a)on all work b)on selected pieces of work
• Which is better for your pupils?
• a) Oral feedback
• b) Written feedback
• c) mainly oral with occasional written
• d) mainly written with occasional oral
• How often do I need to give written feedback?
• a) every day/after each piece ofwork? b) once
  a week
• c) once a fortnight d) once every 3-4 weeks

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What is the pupils role?

• What do you expect the pupils to do with
  feedback?
• a) Remember it to guide future attempts
• b) Use it to improve that piece of work (redraft
  or add to)
• c) Use it in a follow-on piece of work
• d) Other
• Do you give pupils time to
• a) Discuss and reflect on your feedback
• b) Negotiate with you what the feedback means
• c) Respond to your feedback
• d) Other

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Kinds of feedback Israel (1)

• 132 low and high ability year 7 pupils in 12
  classes in 4 schools
• Same teaching, same aims, same teachers, same
  classwork
• Three kinds of feedback
  marks
  comments
  markscomments

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Comments v Marks

• Feedback Gain Interest
• marks none top ve bottom -ve
• Comments 30 all ve
• both none top ve bottom
  -ve
• Butler (1988) Br. Journal of Psychol 58 1-14

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How do pupils respond?

• My marking has developed from comments with
  targets and grades, which is the school policy,
  to comments and targets only. Pupils do work on
  targets and corrections more productively if no
  grades are given.
• Nancy, Riverside school

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Kinds of Feedback Israel 2

• 200 Y6 students
• Divergent thinking tasks
• 4 matched gps - EG1 (Comments), EG2 (Grades),
  EG3 (Praise), CG (No feedback).
• Achievement EG1 gt (EG2 EG3 CG)
• Ego-involvement (EG2 EG3) gt (EG1 CG)
• Butler( 1987)

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Moving to Effective Feedback

• Mark less but mark more thoroughly
• Decide whether you need to give feedback or would
  peer assessment or checking be more appropriate
• Try and convey the feedback as guidance rather
  than judgment
• Give time for pupils to understand and respond to
  your comments
• Acknowledge improvements or give opportunity for
  pupils to develop skills/ideas further

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LI using description
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Two Stars A WISH

• Good starts to paragraphs
• Characters well described
• ..and now you need to work on a clear summary to
  end the work

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How NOT to do it

• Good starts to paragraphs
• Characters well described

..but now you need to work on a clear summary
to end the work
..and now you need to work on a clear summary
to end the work
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Reflection

• Spend a few minutes reflecting on the ways in
  which you FEEDBACK to your pupils
• and jot a few ideas down of how you might
  tweak this.

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Developing Ideas of Quality

• providing guided but direct and authentic
  evaluative experience for students enables them
  to develop their evaluative knowledge, thereby
  bringing them within the guild of people who are
  able to determine quality using multiple
  criteria. It also enables transfer of some of the
  responsibility for making evaluative decisions
  from teacher to learner.
• (D. Royce Sadler, 1989)

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Understanding Quality

• Do they perform
• Headstand
• With hands and head in triangle on floor?
• Push down with hands and lift feet into tucked
  headstand?
• Keep back straight straighten legs?
• Show extension and clear lines?
• Held for 3 seconds?

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Geography Video

• What are the learning behaviours of these pupils
  like?
• What AfL strategies is this teacher using?
• How much information about their learning is the
  teacher picking up? What messages are the
  children picking up about their learning?
• What does the teacher need to focus on to make
  these AfL strategies work more effectively?

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Developing a Vision of Quality

• How do you help pupils develop their sense of
  what a quality piece of work is in a particular
  curricular area?
• What are the advantage and disadvantages of using
  success criteria, rubrics or checklists?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of
  using highlight marking or two stars and a wish?

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ENVIRONMENT FOR AfL
TALK
COLLABORATIVE LEARNING
ACTIVE LEARNER
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Essential elements

• How can the way you give feedback and guidance
  affect
• The quality of pupil-teacher interactions
• The stimulus and help for students to take active
  responsibility for their own learning
• Collaborative learning?

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What Changes will I need to make?

• Reflect on how well your pupils are learning at
  the moment
• Consider what you might do to help them learn
  better
• - develop AfL ideas from last few weeks
  further
• OR - work on AfL feedback ideas
• Decide how you are going to do this over the next
  few weeks, noting any changes in pupils learning
  (diary entries)
• Decide how to share ideas and developments with
  peers

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School Visits

• These have been planned for the week of Feb 2nd
• You need to meet in groups of 4-6 teachers and be
  willing to share evidence of how AfL is
  progressing in your classroom ( 1-2 hours)
• You will be asked to describe your learning
  journey so far and how you have been proactive in
  your professional learning

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Action Planning

• Spend a few minutes reflecting on what you might
  try and the steps you will take to make it as
  effective as possible. What evidence will you
  collect to demonstrate to others how it is
  working? What support will you need?
• Discuss this with your partner.
• Now share your ideas with your family of schools.
  What is similar and what is different about your
  approach to the way other teachers plan to do
  this? What can you learn from this? What would
  you tell other teachers who asked you why you
  chose to approach AfL in this way?