Introduction:
The Purpose of this book
Since the National Curriculum began in
1988, assessment in the classroom has gradually evolved from cumbersome,
relatively meaningless tick systems and evidence collections to a situation
where we have learnt a great deal about the power of formative assessment
practices in effecting and improving children’s learning. We are still
learning, of course. This book aims to clarify the complex picture of the
different aspects of planning, teaching, assessment and record keeping
strategies which together make up the main ways in which assessment comes
alive. The strategies form a complete ‘jigsaw’ so that, when used together,
a quality learning and teaching environment is created in which children and
teachers together aim for high achievement.
- This Introduction
deals with purposes, principles
and definitions of assessment, offers
advice on
agreement trialling and gives guidance for
structuring an
assessment policy.
- Chapter 1 deals with
the three stages of planning,
highlighting important features and making
links
with classroom assessment.
- Chapter 2 explores the
potential for and impact of
sharing learning intentions with children,
moving
on to pupil involvement and self-evaluation.
- Chapter 3 discusses
marking; focusing on its use
as a record, as feedback to the child, manageability
and implications for the Early Years.
- Chapter 4 tackles
target setting, with particular
reference to pupil target setting, again
focusing on
manageability and greatest impact on learning.
- Chapter 5 deals with
celebrating achievement of
the development of the ‘whole child’, valuing
achievement beyond the National Curriculum,
and looks at the potential of
a Record of
Achievement as a vehicle for this.
- Chapter 6 takes a
crisp look at other aspects of
assessment: baseline assessment,
value-added,
benchmarking and summative testing,
summarizing purposes and
uses.
Principles of Assessment
The following list
provides a starting point for what is most important about planning and
assessment processes:
1
The foundation of the assessment
policy should be a clear teaching and learning policy.
The assessment policy should begin with
establishing aims and principles, establishing what the school wants
assessment to mean and to do.
2
Systems and strategies should be
trialled and reviewed until aims are met.
Once aims and principles are established,
processes and systems can be trialled and discussed, modified and retrialled
until the aims are fulfilled.
3
Systems and processes should be
manageable.
Aims will never be met if processes are
intrinsically unmanageable. Support needs to be given if manageability
is a problem for a few teachers only, but if the majority view is of
unmanageability, the strategy needs a rethink.
4
Repetition should be avoided.
Teachers often find themselves writing the
same thing in various formats. Unless this is useful in itself,
strategies should be sought for reducing the repetition (e.g. pre-printing,
cutting and pasting).
5
All assessment processes must be
useful.
They must have a positive impact on
children’s learning and the teacher’s teaching—they must make a difference
to be worthwhile.
6 Planning should be led by
learning intentions not
activities.
We should first establish what we want the
children to learn, then decide the best way of enabling the learning to
happen.
7 Assessment is not one thing: it
manifests itself
as a wealth of different strategies and products.
Assessment begins at the planning stage in
establishing learning intentions; these are then shared with children;
feedback takes place via self-evaluation, dialogue and marking; targets are
set with children; assessment notes are made to inform future planning;
overall progress is celebrated via a child’s achievement folder.
8 Assessment should involve
children at all
stages, and parents where possible.
Assessment needs to be a two- and three-way
process if the learner is to gain significantly from it. Without the
child’s involvement, especially, assessment is simply ‘done’ to the child,
having little impact on the child’s development.
9 Assessment should include
unexpected outcomes.
We can be too obsessed with the ‘input –
output’ model. Although assessment is primarily based on the extent to
which learning intentions are fulfilled, we need to be aware of achievement
demonstrated which falls outside our specific aims. Children do not
necessarily learn what we set out for them to learn but sometimes learn
other things. The source of their learning lies beyond as well as within
the classroom and must be acknowledged and celebrated alongside and as part
of intended learning.
10 Assessment should include
achievement beyond
the National Curriculum.
Social, physical and attitude development
contributes fundamentally to academic achievement and should be given equal
status, so that ‘non-academic’ achievement is seen as part of the continuum
of academic achievement. Celebrating what is seen as ‘non-academic’
achievement raises self-esteem, thus increasing the chance of academic
success.
11 Monitoring should take second
place to learning
needs.
Pressure of monitoring can lead to systems
and formats being designed that are easy to monitor. Systems should first
meet learning and teaching needs, then the question of how monitoring will
take place needs to be considered.
This is not the complete introduction.
Due to page formatting it could not be
loaded in its entirety to this page.
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