I was fortunate enought to be invited back to form part of a helpdesk at Newcastle University on the 26th of January delivering short bursts of CPD to their previous cohort of NQTs. The topic which was high on the NQT’s agenda was assessment and I took that topic.
The theme for me was about saving time assessing and saving time in giving formative and summative feedback. I admit now that my ideas may seem controversial to some, this all depends on your school’s marking policy so I appreciate this is not a one-size-fits-all approach, but it may inspire you to do something different.
Assessment for Learning
In my department, every lesson, the students peer assess their homework which is a vocabulary test based on the words they learned the previous lesson, they then RAG (red, amber, green) rate each others work and score out of twelve. These scores are recorded on a spreadsheet (you will find I am always taking the electronic approach). Students will have at least one more chance to peer assess each others work after short activities and even self asess, this is either RAG rated or we use the ‘star and two wishes’ aproach. This follows the school’s policy and is really a true reflection of what assessment for learning is, meaning not going crazy with assessment and levels all year around.
Formative Feedback
Every half term a piece of work is marked and RAG rated and the students are given teacher feedback in the form of a star and two wishes (we are advised not to give levels out more than twice a year). All students work is assessed, we focus on the productive skills here.
To save time, we code the student’s work so that they have to write out their own ‘star and two wishes’, therefore processing our comments. The students are then expected to reflect on our comments and state how they are expected to improve based on our feedback. I have attached a powerpoint example of this here. AdóndeVasFeedbackWriting
Therefore if a student gets this written on their work
Star C
Wish B
Wish D
They would write
Star You made good use of the present tense and included connectives and time phrases.
Wish To improve your national curriculum level make sure you use time phrases to say when you did your activities– see your planner for examples
Wish To improve your national curriculum level, include different verbs in the immediate future tense such as voy a + infinitive.
Argument against this method: “It’s not personal enough”
This is an example you can adapt – the star can be handwritten on the work to address the student directly making the interpersonal link, however there is a method for climbing the National Curriculum ladder and you will find this stops you from going insane writing the same ‘to improve’ comments over and over again. Where I have exceptions e.g, a student produces an exceptional piece of work or a terrible piece, I will take the time to make their feedback as specific as it needs to be for them, but honestly, nine times out of ten they can be grouped into the same category.
Summative Feedback
Twice a year we give the stduents a summative feedback sheet at the stages where they should know they have moved up at least a sub-level. Here is an example of a completed feedback sheet PostMergeExample ‘vocab’ means the average vocab test score up until that point.
To get to produce similar feedback sheets for your topic, regardless of the subject you teach (and they don’t have to be summative, they can also be formative or used for any kind of feedback) follow this three step method.
- Decide what you want to tell your students and create your template sheet in Microsoft Word. Here is my blank template that I made in Word
- Using the EXACT headings from your template, put them across the top of your spreadsheet in a row, then fill the data e.g. student name, the information you want and space for feedback etc. Here is my completed example in Excel Year7IntroductionsExample .
- The following two documents show you how to link the template in Word to the spreadheet you created in Excel. One is for Mac users and the other for Windows users. MM-Mac and MM-WIN .
I ask the students to RAG rate their levels based on previous levels so they hopefully see where they are stuck and where they are making progress. Also, they are expected to reflect properly on their progress and how to improve based on what we have said. We don’t accept non-specific responses, the students have to demonstrate they have understood and they can discuss their progress with a partner before being questioned to ensure thorough understanding.
Designing the template does take time, but if you get it right the first time, you can keep it the same for the future or simply tweak it for subsequent years.
Argument against this method: “It’s not personal enough”
The same judgments and principles apply here as to the previous method, the stars can be personal, but the nuts and bolts of making improvements in NC or GCSE levels are fairly similar. Make it as personal as you like, but you will find some thing will be repeated and there is nothing wrong with cutting and pasting those parts.
If you use any of these ideas, can you please post here what you have done, what you have done differently and is this useful?
