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Milestones
indicating NC levels to aid feedback to pupils
on how to improve
knowledge and skills |
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School:
Shaftesbury School, Dorset |
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Fellow: Andrew Smith |
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Email: andrew@woodlakeclose.co.uk,
andrew.smith@poole.gov.uk |
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Introduction |
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Assessment for learning (AfL) now has a
much higher profile in schools and one aspect
of AfL is providing students with feedback
on their work that identifies its strengths
and helps pupils understand what they need
to do to make progress. However, teachers
in my school are very busy and not all of
them are providing this sort of feedback.
My project aims to support my colleagues and
has three aims: |
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to create
a differentiated feedback bank for a
range of assessment activities so that
students receive comments that help
them to understand what they would need
to be able to do to progress to the
next level in that particular assessment |
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to design the feedback
so that it also helps them to make progress
against the Yearly Teaching Objectives
for each of the five Key Ideas as published
in the National Strategy |
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to use ICT to make it as easy as
possible for the teacher to give detailed
feedback and keep a record of the improvements
suggested |
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The first aim of this project
appears to be in contradiction to the guidance
in the National Strategy, which states that
“assessment of pupils’ progress
in the medium term should be made against
the relevant yearly teaching objectives for
each year for the unit of work, not against
the level descriptions.” (p51). Pupils,
however, remain very keen to understand why
their work is awarded a particular level and
what they can do to access a higher level.
I am keen to design a feedback bank that not
only gives them guidance on improving a particular
assessment but also provides them with linkage
to the yearly teaching objectives for each
key idea. |
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What has been achieved so far? |
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The initial focus of work this
term has been on defining exactly what the
project is intended to achieve, and, surprisingly,
this took longer than I expected. My original
proposal was to create a differentiated feedback
bank for a number of assessment tasks, but
after some thought and discussion I decided
that the feedback would be much more powerful
for both students and teachers if it linked
to the yearly teaching objectives for the
five key scientific ideas that underpin the
Key Stage 3 Programme of Study (cells, interdependence,
particles, forces and energy) as set out by
the Science Secondary Strategy and gave them
not only the information they would need to
improve in this particular assessment, but
also a deeper understanding of progression
through the NC levels that they could hopefully
apply in different contexts in different topics.
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Once this decision had been
made my efforts focused on experimenting with
a feedback bank for a single assessment activity.
The assessment that was chosen linked to the
Year 8 QCA Module on ‘Heating and Cooling’
and the key idea of particles. After lessons
on the different methods of heat transfer
(conduction, convection and radiation) and
insulation, students were given the assessment
to complete as a homework activity. The assessment
required them to make a poster to show how
a cup of hot tea cooled down. A feedback bank
was then created that detailed particular
features of the work that would be required
to achieve each level, and a suggested comment
for improvement that would help them to move
the work to the next level, and, more importantly,
help them make progress against the yearly
teaching objectives. The draft feedback bank
has been trialed in several slightly different
formats with some students. This has been
a very useful activity as it has allowed me
to make refinements and revealed weaknesses
that might not otherwise have been apparent.
Improvements that have been made as a result
of the trial include making the feedback more
individualised by including names and changing
the phrasing of the feedback so that it is
more accessible to students. Teacher comments
have also been very pertinent to the development
of this project and include concerns that
the original feedback bank did not have enough
choice and that for some students the feedback
sentences were not appropriate and they had
to make up their own. |
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Once one feedback bank had
been developed the next stage I considered
was how to use ICT to make the feedback process
as simple as possible to manage. Initially
I used Microsoft EXCEL as an electronic feedback
bank where teachers selected the appropriate
comments for each pupil from a bank of statements
and a mail merge was used to print out sheets
that were attached to the assessment. However,
this was found to be rather clumsy and inflexible
so at the time of writing this report a new
version of the electronic feedback bank is
being created in Microsoft ACCESS. |
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What is planned next? |
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I am planning to create a more
flexible electronic feedback banks for the
assessment activity already trialed. This
will include a wider range of feedback comments,
the opportunity for teachers to write their
own for those students who do not ‘fit’
the standard ones and the capability to print
out the feedback comments on large self-adhesive
labels that can then be quickly attached to
the student’s work. |
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Once an effective working system has been
created for one assessment the next step will
be to extend it to cover other assessment
activities. The logical approach would be
to focus on several assessments around one
of the five key ideas (for example, particles),
with the aim of creating a group of assessments
whose feedback banks are linked together not
only to allow students to make improvements
in one particular assessment but across different
contexts and topics within the chosen key
idea. |
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The National Strategy also says that ‘the
principle is to mobilise medium-term assessments
quickly into the setting of relevant and realistic
targets.’ And how teachers will be able
to use the assessment data gathered to set
targets, and the support the package might
provide, are things that will also need consideration.
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Finances |
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Just over half of the first
allocation of £1500 has been spent on
the purchase of a basic laptop, an address
label printer and Microsoft Access software.
It is not anticipated that there would be
many more ‘hardware’ costs. I
anticipate that future costs will include
paying for cover to release time for me to
develop the feedback banks further, talking
to teachers and pupils about improving each
feedback bank and some longer term evaluation
of pupil’s work in a particular key
idea to find out if the feedback bank has
helped them make progress through the yearly
teaching objectives. |
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At the end of the project I
would like to be able to distribute these
resources on a CD ROM to interested schools
and colleagues. There will be a cost implication
with this so I am keen to ‘ring fence’
a significant amount of the grant for this
purpose. |
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What will the final product look
like? |
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The final product will include
a collection of assessments on CD-ROM for
each of the key ideas in science. For each
assessment there will be an electronic feedback
bank where teachers (and students undertaking
peer / self assessment) can select a ‘what
went well’ comment and a ‘to improve
further’ comment. There will be a good
choice of comments available, names will be
able to be inserted automatically and there
will be the facility for the teacher to add
his / her own comment if appropriate. The
electronic feedback bank will output the comments
printed on self-adhesive labels, which can
then be attached to student’s work.
A record will also be created of the feedback
that has been given for future reference. |
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To increase its flexibility,
the resource will be designed such that users
could add feedback comment banks for new assessments. |
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What impact will this
work have on students? |
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I hope that the benefits to
students will be numerous. First, they should
receive good quality feedback that will help
them to understand what it is they need to
do to improve and progress to the next level
in a particular assessment and through the
yearly teaching objectives. Second, it is
a resource that could be used in a very powerful
way for peer and self-assessment by allowing
students to use the electronic feedback bank
themselves. It is intended that some time
should be spent on this exciting aspect during
the Summer Term. |
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What impact will this
work have on teachers? |
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The aim of creating feedback
banks is that it will raise the standard of
written comments currently given to students
by providing teachers with exemplar materials
that they can further develop. The electronic
aspect of the project will make it less onerous
for teachers to give detailed written feedback
to students by helping them to concentrate
on the important issue of the quality of the
comments rather than the mundane task of writing
them out, which naturally limits what will
be written both in terms of detail and quality.
It will also allow teachers to track pupil
progress against the yearly teaching objectives
rather than simply recording progress as a
list of levels achieved in various assessments.
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How will you evaluate
the success of the project in relation to
the intended outcomes? |
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To evaluate the success of
the project students will be surveyed on how
well they think the feedback has helped them
to progress, work scrutiny will be used to
discover if the feedback has helped the students
make progress against the yearly teaching
objectives for a particular key idea and teachers
will be interviewed about their opinions on
the feedback bank. |
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