The Nail In The Coffin

The learning and teaching aspect of assessment falls under the umbrella of AiFL as a sub-category Assessment AS Learning: learning how to learn where learners become more aware of what they learn, how they learn and what helps them learn (LTS ). Learning how to learn has parallels with Vygotsky’s constructivist model of learning where adult interaction and discussion enables teachers to extend children’s understandings (Durkin K 1995). Giving a mark or a basic comment are no longer deemed appropriate to enable a child to progress as the mark or vague comment only gives a message of what a child did not achieve not how they can achieve it. Research reveals that marking is really a teacher chore that they do because they need to have all the work marked to date resulting in the ‘time monster’ being against them. Marking is also done ‘away’ from children with feedback coming too late after the learning. What Assessment AS Learning advocates is that feedback to children should be more constructive with comments about how to achieve rather than marks. This does not eliminate using marks as children do need to know how well they are doing but they do not need constant reminders when they are failing they need advice where:

‘The real purpose of marking is to give good feedback to children about how well they did against a specific learning intention and some ideas about how they can improve.’
(Smith I 2004: 18)

Did It Work?

In my last post I mentioned about letting the first five children to get all their work correct to be the experts and mark the other work and provide support. This work well with the little time we had left as it took forever to have a child who could complete all their work correctly. The children enjoyed the challenge of being the teacher. Rather than copy lots of answer sheets the children used their own jotters. I am going to try this again tomorrow as I have more time to see if I can get the slow children to complete their work as they may be willing to come to their peers than they do to me.

To Mark Or Not To Mark

Teachers do not need to choose between being a good teacher and getting good results.

The pressure in schools to produce results and have every piece of work marked becomes a chore to a teacher rather than a means to find out where a child is in their learning. How many times have I been guilty of marking a maths check-up and filing it away in a folder with only the marks as a representation of where the child is. Did I analyse at the actual questions the child did not understand and plan around this or did I move on to the next concept? More to often than not the later route was taken thus being detrimental to the child and mocking the reason to assess.

Rather than focus on the actual assessment marks to find out who is top of the class and who is bottom I should be adopting the following four strategies:

• Mark less to achieve more;
• Tune into children's minds;
• Give immediate quality feedback;
• Encourage good self and peer assessment.

Mark less to achieve more - I tried this strategy today with my maths class. Instead of marking every sum I chose the first 12 and left no mark but a comment stating how many the child had correct out of 12 leaving them to find the errors rather than have them pointed out. Don't we as teachers tell the children to check their work prior to handing it in. Most don't because they do not have the analytical skills to do this as the teacher always points to the errors. By asking the children to go back and find the errors it makes them think analyse their work more carefully as they know they have 4 mistakes but which ones. This was a super exercise that I will do more often as it made the children THINK.

Another strategy I used was to allow the children to mark their own work without feeling guilty. The work chosen was a reinforcement sheet in maths as I felt that I had covered any problems children were having and was confident that they would be making errors rather than misunderstandings. The only problem is with allowing children to mark their own work is that they take a longer time than the teacher to mark the same set of sums. This results in a bottle neck of children waiting resulting in the noise level rising.

There are a few ways to compensate this:

1. Scan the answers and children check on the computers - this is fine for me where I have 20 comuters in my classroom but maybe not for a class with one;
2. Photocopy a few answer sheets - this does waste paper though;
3. Call out the answers and children mark their own - down side is that the quick children have to wait for the slower children. The up side is that the answers can be explained as they are read.
4. The first five children to get all correct become the class markers where they explain to their peers the ones that are incorrect - now I like this one but have not tried it. Will give it a go tomorrow to see what the results are.

'Correction often comes too fast and too often for most learners, impressing on them precisely what they don't know and can't do.'