It
is now 16 years since Paul Black and Dylan Williams wrote the publication
Inside the Black Box and shook the world of education with the importance of
Assessment for Learning. To many it was common sense that we must find out what
students know before approaching content to be learnt. Teachers certainly
already did this on an individual, one to one basis with students but over the
last 10 years we have developed many ways of assessing the progress of large
groups of students more effectively. This enables us to pitch and differentiate
content more appropriately with whole classes. We must not forget that at the
core of Assessment for Learning is the individual student and their own
personal learning needs.
Common
misconceptionsAssessment for Learning is exclusively for the benefit of the classroom teacher and their students. It is not for the benefit of an observer and should not be used merely to signpost progress that has been made. A good observer will see all of the forms of Assessment for Learning that are being used and whether they are effective.
Mini-plenaries
are still valuable. At appropriate times they are important in providing
evidence as to what students have learnt so that a teacher can decide on the
future direction of a lesson. They may also have an important role in memory
retention and engagement.
Assessment for Learning Do’s and
Don’tsWe must look for robust evidence that students have made progress. Self-assessment against learning objectives can be problematic as students will often overstate or understate their own ability. It is better to ask questions of students that really test whether they have grasped a concept. As a learner, often we don’t know whether we have learnt something until we make a mistake.
I
find it quite hard to see a better tool than whiteboards in enabling a teacher
to see the thoughts of a whole group of students as opposed to one or two
individuals. It can be difficult reading a large number of long answers so
either mainly short answer questions can be used or students asked to underline
the key terms in their answer. Good Assessment for Learning will involve the
use of a range of evidence. The most important thing is then that we are able
to respond to such evidence effectively.
-
Answering
questions on whiteboards
-
Naming/Matching/True
or False activities
-
Looking
at work that students have completed
-
Interaction
with individuals whilst walking around a class
-
Question
and answer
Do
we still need learning objectives?
Establishing
learning objectives is clearly an important part of the planning and
differentiation of a lesson as it forces us to think about what we intend to
cover in a lesson. This can be open to change however and learning objectives
should never constrain a lesson. They can be useful to students who may use
them to identify what they need to do to improve in the future but we should perhaps
question whether students writing them down in full is an appropriate use of
classroom time.
Some
of the best lessons I have seen in recent years had learning objectives posed
as questions. This has given a real sense of flexibility and dynamism to the
lesson. Learning objectives should
always be directly addressed by the activities or questions posed in the lesson
as well as providing effective challenge for all students in a class.