Assessment for Learning

1. Assessment for Learning More than just traffic lights, smiley faces and lollipop sticks!

2. What do you understand AfL to be? What might it look like in the classroom?

3. KHDA recommendations for SRS are: • to continue to increase progress and attainment • to improve student attitudes e.g. responsibility, aspirations. • SRS school improvement priorities are: • raising attainment and accelerating progress • improving and maintaining quality of T & L • enhance the ethos of the school including effective behaviour for learning. • By using a variety of AfLstrategies, we can effectively raise attainment and enable accelerated progress as well as challenging pupils own perceptions of their learning and intelligence by promoting a growth mindset i.e. that intelligence is not fixed. Research has shown that AfL has seen pupils taking on more ownership of their own learning.

6. If you are using Assessment for Learning, what is the role of: The teacher? The learner? Peers?

7. If we take into account what the teacher, the learner and their peers do, there are 5 key principles of AfL that come out… • Teacher • Finding out where the learner is- how do we do this? • Providing useful feedback to move learning forward • Ensuring all pupils are clear about the Success Criteria • Learner • Self-assessment strategies- what strategies can we use? • Peers • Supporting each other with the learning- activating students as teaching resources • If you are doing at least one of these, you are doing Assessment for Learning. If you are not doing one of those, then you are not doing Assessment for Learning. Dylan William

8. VIDEO- Year 11 Revising polygons Questions to think about during the video: * What AfL strategies did she use? * How were they useful in helping her to understand the pupils learning and identify next steps? * What higher order thinking skills was she promoting?

9. How do we provide effective feedback in order to move learning forward?

10. Next steps marking at SRS • Once a week in: • English • Mathematics • Science • IPC (open question)

11. Activity • This is focused on refining our marking feedback skills to give clear and specific comments that children can respond to and that will help them improve/ extend their understanding.

12. Poor quality feedback • Limits the response the child can give • Isn’t specific • Doesn’t require the child to respond immediately • Doesn’t allow the child to demonstrate that they have deepened their understanding. • “You have included excellent adjectives. • Next time try to use adverbs.”

13. High quality feedback • Allows the child to respond fully • Is very specific to what the individual needs • Requires the child to respond immediately • Allows the child to demonstrate that they have corrected their misconceptions/challenged their learning • “You have included excellent adjectives. • Look at your second paragraph. There are 3 verbs in there. Can you add in 3 adverbs to describe these verbs? ”

14. What to do • Look at the sheets on your tables in 3s. Read the learning intentions (WALTs) and the example of a poor quality feedback comment. • Write a high quality comment that allows the child to give a full and immediate (ish) response. • Now swap with another 3 to share your comments. Can you improve them even more?

15. Don’t let the tools become the focus… Self and Peer Assessment

16. Like trying to guess what’s in a parcel, the whole purpose of AfL is “shaking the box” to see what’s inside by: * Listening; * Watching; * Sensing emotion; * Doing or saying something and observing the reaction; * Asking learners to do something and observing what they do; * Asking good questions and really listening to the answers; * Letting the learners answer your questions and not putting words into their mouths. Be aware of getting so tied up in the tools and strategies for AfL that you forget why they’re being used. Ask yourself…. What will that AfL technique tell me about their understanding? What will I do as a result? From Good to Outstanding www.fromgoodtooutstanding.com

18. What questions do you now have? How can you use today’s learning in a different subject? How do you feel about your work today? What do you feel about the information you have learnt? What facts have you learnt? What information are you now confident about? How I crossed the bridge What could you have done better in today’s lesson? What were the weaknesses of your work? Here’s where I started Here’s where I finished What was the main idea of today’s lesson? How much progress have you made in this lesson? What did you like about today’s lesson? What were the strengths of your work today? Reflection

19. Asking effective questions… “Good learning starts with questions, not answers.” Guy Claxton

20. http://teachertoolkit.me/2013/01/04/pppb-version2/

21. Questions that enable children to communicate, reason and justify. Sentence scaffolds promote oracy and allow pupils to think about the content whilst promoting accurate sentence construction, something that is especially valuable in SRS where virtually all pupils are EAL. Maths question- Odd one Out

23. So what are the expectations in terms of planning? SRS expectations are that planning will include key questions that can be used to assess pupils’ learning at different stages of the lesson. However, we are aware that not all questions can be planned for and many will arise as the lesson unfolds.

24. http://www.journeytoexcellence.org.uk/videos/expertspeakers/collaborativelearningdylanwiliam.asphttp://www.journeytoexcellence.org.uk/videos/expertspeakers/collaborativelearningdylanwiliam.asp http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6261847 What are your next steps in terms of using Assessment for Learning in your classroom?