A4L, AfL or Assessment for Learning

During my visit to Notre Dame Pip Cartwright demonstrated his new AIDA tracking and formative marking system. Linked directly to pupils’ portfolios the system allows teachers:

• Track whether a piece of work has been completed
• Look at the detailed requirements for a piece of work related to the SPB
• Mark the work to tell the pupils whether the work is:

• In line with requirements
• Acceptable but there are ideas to improve it
• Unsatisfactory for some reason (with comment given)
• Not yet done

Pupils complete a request form to ask for their improved work to be reassessed. This means that pupils are responsible to ensure they get the highest mark for their work. They are thus directly involved in tracking their own progress.

The system is also used to reinforce mini deadlines with pupils. They get a date by which a section has to be completed for marking. As a result of the information being easily accessible to them, many choose to address the gaps in their work immediately.

Pip tells me that this is the result of numerous attempts to use ICT effectively in the management of coursework and to track and record formative assessment. Pupils, who have been presented with this, just get on with it and use the comments effectively to improve their work. It seems they care little about the exact system used, it’s the formative assessment which makes the difference to them.

There is a plethora of materials available for AfL. To save everyone having to look for them all the time, I have updated the weblinks on the del.icio.us site. This is also available as an rss feed. Within Norfolk, the links are also available within the Netmedia VLE. Please feel free to contact us with further links to add to the list.

Talking to Alex Savage (AST at NotreDame) revealed some interesting ideas about the use of AfL in ICT lessons. The Keystage 3 Strategy had been promoting ongoing assessment from the outset, but teachers have often been reluctant. They prefered to have an assessment at the end of a unit of work. It seems that going through a process of developing assessment has helped to come full circle. Here is Alex’ advice:

Before you start the task, tell the children what they need to do to get a specific level and what would move them to yet another level. (Example - look at welcome slide “assessment criteria”)

Provide pupils with a check list so that they can sort out their priorities. (See work in progress on the “Assessment Checklist”)

Spend a lot of effort on teaching the use of the assessment and establish new routines. Most of the effort should go on reporting back to the students, before they complete the task. This enables them to act upon your advice.

Alex thinks that most of his students have moved to the next level much quicker than they used to!

Giving students the right feedback is a crucial component of Assessment for Learning. To develop teacher skills in responding to pupils, the Enterprise Faculty has been involved in an exciting CPD programme. Teachers recorded a video of their own lessons and reviewed these jointly with colleagues. The programme was not without difficulties. Technical hurdles had to be overcome and cameras did not always capture the right part of the room/lesson. The faculty grew stronger due to the supportive approach taken by colleagues and the programme clearly had a postive impact on teaching and learning. For more information on how to use video as part of a school based CPD programme please contact sebastian.gasse@norfolk.gov.uk.

As a result of the work described previously, we put some ideas together:

The following needs to be considered when setting up such CPD:

• Permissions to video students need to be obtained.
• If the video is recorded, the copyright remains with NCC and the recording must not be shown to third parties or be publicised without prior permission of those filmed.  It can be used by the teachers involved to reflect upon the lesson.  For security reasons tapes should be wiped at the end of the process.
• A focus for the observation needs to be agreed. This might affect the positioning of the unit.
• All parties involved need to agree the role of the observer (i.e. passive, active involvement when requested, active support with intervention)
• Pupils need to be informed prior to the lesson.  They need to be reminded of expected behaviour, including the need to eliminate unnecessary noises, such as tapping etc.
• At the beginning of the lessons pupils need to be reminded of the purpose of the observation and how it will be used by teachers.
• Pupils should be given an opportunity to greet the person joining the lesson remotely.  Alternatively, once the video conferencing has been acknowledged, the TV showing the remote teacher/observer can be turned off.  This results in anonymity for the observer and less distraction for the class.  However, students must still be made aware of the observation taking place.
• If students have greeted the person at the beginning, they should also have an opportunity to say good bye.
• The observer needs to have access to all lesson materials prior to the lesson, particularly the lesson plan.
• A live internet connection for both parties is desirable, if the observer takes a more active role.
• A feedback time needs to be arranged.  Feedback can take place through the unit, face to face or through alternative video conferencing facilities, such as Flashmeeting.
• The observer needs to mute their microphone to avoid distractions to the lesson, whenever they are taking a passive role.

Technical considerations:

• The connection needs to be tested prior to the observation.
• The unit and microphone needs to be positioned appropriately in the room.  It could be in a corner, or in the vicinity of the people to be observed more closely (e.g. teacher, small group).
• The remote control needs to be configured with the right number of presets for different angles and parts of the room.
• If the IWB or display is used, the unit needs to be set up to focus onto it.  The teacher needs ensure that lights are switched off and on accordingly during the lesson.
• Where ICT lesson are observed, it is beneficial to have flat screen monitors, rather than CRTs.  The refresh rate of the CRTs causes noticeable flickering through remote observation.

Video conferencing with classroom observation might be used to focus on improving the following aspects of teaching:

• Behaviour for learning
• Getting class to listen
• The way the teacher interacts with the class (particularly NQTs)
• Structure of lesson Aims, Assessment criteria, Plenary
• The change over from one activity to the next
• How to do whole class discussion
• listening to Q&A, class talk
• listening to student conversations and positioning the unit to listen to groups
• Getting the students to present to second audience

It might be less suitable for:

• Viewing students work
• Seeing the whole class
• picking up on all aspects of the classroom and interaction (you miss whatever is not in the camera view)

I read this fascinating post on Konrad Glogowski’s blog of proximal development. Konrad points to the need for engaging with pupils on the level of ideas and describes how his students suddenly pay notice and read with interest the feedback they are given on their essays. It rang a bell with me, as I used to teach MfL some time ago. We always felt at the time, that responding to pupils in a conversational manner, commenting and discussing on aspects of what they had said, rather than on sentence construction, grammar, form etc.

I do struggle to see the application of this to all other subjects, perhaps other people could help with this.

Thanks to Mark Berthelemew for pointing this post out to us.

An AST for ICT in a Norwich High School has recently got excited about the use of Video Conferencing for teacher CPD. Lessons are observed remotely, saving time and travel and feedback can often take place straight away using the technology. The children find the process interesting too, though I’m sure the novelty will wear off eventually. The adviser joined in on the act, but when feedback was not possible straight away, Flashmeeting was used to evaluate the lesson in relation to AfL. During the second 30mins of the hour long video meeting a protocol for using VC for lesson observation was developed. We are keen to spread the practice. Contact Sebastian for further information.

Whilst observing lessons with a focus on AfL, I noticed a few things which are worth sharing more widely.  In a lesson taught at Sprowston High School, Norwich the teacher enabled students to evaluate each other’s coursework against agreed criteria.  Furthermore, prior to the students evaluation he modelled the process for the class.  This helped students to focus on details, which they might otherwise have missed.  Incidentally, two of the teachers noticed the impact of peer evaluation on learning: “I had told them lots of times, but this time they actually learned it.”

KS4 and AfL seem to have a rather mixed relationship. In many respects, assessment for learning works well in many classrooms. Teachers are explaining examination criteria in detail, they point out what else needs to be done or learnt. When it comes to coursework however, there seems to be some difficulty in developing good practice. “Letting students get on with the work” seems to be given preference. I wonder, whether we should lobby the QCA to include in the examination criteria the following aspects:

• can give feedback to a fellow student and apply examination criteria to their work
• can break the task into manageable chunks
• can allocate appropriate amounts of time to each task
• can complete a weekly tracking document, which shows what they have done and what they will do next.

Maybe I’m wrong and students are already assessed on this. Maybe doesn’t need to be explicit?

Some of the strategy materials on assessment for learning are great and really detailed. However, too much detail is often a problem for busy teachers. When I asked an adviser, how she enables people to have a quick introduction to AfL, she pointed out booklet no. 12 in the Pedagogy in Practice pack. Its predictably called ‘Assessment for Learning’ and contains a nice overview of the topic. The section on ‘Helping pupils recognise the standards they are aiming for’ is quite useful, as it is often quite difficult to enable student to understand National Curriculum Levels and other assessment criteria created for Adults.

You can download the booklet here and it’s also in our link collection.