Summer week 2

Mentor materials

Avoiding common assessment pitfalls

Intended outcomes

The intended outcomes of this topic are for Early Career Teachers to:

Learn how to avoid common assessment pitfalls, by:

• Planning formative assessment tasks linked to lesson objectives and thinking ahead about what would indicate understanding (e.g. by using hinge questions to pinpoint knowledge gaps).
• Drawing conclusions about what pupils have learned by looking at patterns of performance over a number of assessments (e.g. appreciating that assessments draw inferences about learning from performance).
• Choosing, where possible, externally validated materials, used in controlled conditions when required to make summative assessments.

Activities

Introducing the topic (5 minutes)

ECTs should have brought with them two things to this topic:

• A lesson or sequence of lessons that is going to be taught in the next week
• A selection of marked assessments from one class.

Planning formative assessment (20 minutes)

Pose the question: what is the purpose of an end of lesson assessment?

Answers might include:

• To provide information to move the learning forwards.
• To give us formative information: what have pupils understood, what has not been understood, what are the misconceptions?
• Not about grading – we need an assessment that will provide feedback to move the learning forward.

Together, look at the sequence of lessons and discuss:

• What is the end of unit assessment?
• What are the skills and knowledge that you will be teaching this term? (If applicable, how might you break these skills/knowledge down further?)
• What are the key skills/concepts that pupils must learn over this sequence of learning in order to be successful in the end of unit assessment?
• In the lesson you will be teaching next, what are the objectives? How do these help build towards the end of unit assessment? What skills/concepts will you be introducing in this lesson?

Example:

Lesson objective: to learn the different uses of apostrophes and be able to apply these.

Pose the question: what are some of the ways we could assess the learning at the end of a lesson?

Answers might include:

• Do now activity. Advantages: useful to identify pupil starting point, useful as a recall tool. Disadvantages: might need a follow-on to secure learning.
• Regular low-stake quizzes. Advantages: identifies what pupils know and can do, low-stakes so supportive of pupils’ needs, helps identify next steps. Disadvantage: potentially time-consuming.
• Exit tickets. Advantages: identifies what pupils know and can do. Disadvantage: timings – if we use these at the end of the lesson it might be too late to re-teach.
• Hinge questions. Advantages: can target misconceptions. Disadvantage: pupils may be able to guess the correct answer.
• Written questions which require short answers. Advantages: more detailed response so pupil understanding can be explored further. Disadvantage: time-consuming to mark.

We need to make sure that our assessment matches the learning objective and that we select the best assessment tool to help us do this.

Non- example:

Lesson objective: to learn the different uses of apostrophes and be able to apply these. End of lesson assessment: Exit ticket When should an apostrophe be used?

Pose the question: why is this a non-example?

Answers might include:

• Not closely linked enough to the objective – we won’t get answers to show whether pupils have really understood how to use apostrophes.
• Lacks reliability and validity.
• Lacks structure.
• What you expect of pupils is unclear.

Non-example:

Lesson objective: to learn the different uses of apostrophes and be able to apply these. End of lesson assessment: Exit ticket.

Tick the following sentences which show apostrophes being used correctly

1. The dog chased it’s tail
2. It’s going to be a lovely, sunny day
3. I would like lot’s of ice cream

Pose the question: what is the issue here?

Answers might include:

• Easy for pupils to guess – not enough items to be a valid assessment.
• Does not ask much of pupils.
• Doesn’t reveal anything about pupil thinking.- Answers do not allow for high-quality feedback.

Example:

Lesson objective: to learn the different uses of apostrophes and be able to apply these. End of lesson assessment: Exit ticket

Add apostrophes to the following sentences if they are needed:

1. Youre going to love this film
2. Shes always on time
3. Its my favourite flavour
4. My dogs are always hungry
5. The ladies bags

Questions for discussion:

• What makes this example better?
• How does the assessment measure the objective?

Answers might include:

• It will show us which pupils have understood and what they have understood
• This will show us which of the uses of apostrophes pupils have understood
• Which ones they have not understood
• Reliable and valid
• Will highlight misconceptions.

The ECT should plan out an assessment task to measure pupils’ progress towards the lesson objective/s at the end of the lesson.

Pose the question: how will you measure progress throughout the lesson towards meeting this objective?

The ECT should use the following information to help them:

• What will measure pupil progress towards achieving the lesson objective?
• What do I want to know about pupils’ learning?
• What am I going to do with this information?
• What is the best way of finding this out?
• When am I going to find this out?
• When and how am I going to give feedback to pupils?

The ECT should add in detail to their lesson plan around how they will assess progress throughout the lesson.

Understanding patterns in assessments (20 minutes)

Together, review the set of marked assessments the ECT has recently completed. Use the review document on Handout 5.2 to help you with this.

What has the review shown the ECT about patterns of performance? What will the ECT take forward into their practice?

Improving the quality of assessments through using externally validated resources (10 minutes)

Pose the question: how can we ensure that assessments we create are reliable and valid?

Answers might include:

• Refining assessment processes.
• Working with colleagues.
• Reviewing assessments regularly.
• Adding more questions to our assessments.
• Using externally validated sources.

We are going to take a closer look at using externally validated resources.

Pose the question: what are the benefits of using externally validated resources?

Answers might include:

• Ensures assessment is reliable and valid.
• Allows you to measure pupil progress towards learning goals.
• Clear mark scheme to utilise.
• Quality assurance has already taken place.
• Allows you to make judgements about pupil learning.
• Allow you to measure pupil progress towards learning goals.

Mentor to talk the ECT through some of the places they can find externally validated resources. These might include:

• Exam board websites.
• Past papers the department has.
• National databases of questions such as Testbase or Exampro.

Planning for action

The ECT worked on a lesson today planning in formative assessment opportunities. Identify together when that lesson will be taught and agree that you will come and observe a part of the lesson looking specifically at the formative assessment opportunities.

If the mentor is unable to observe, alternative options are:

• The ECT could record a part of their lesson and share with their mentor
• The ECT could teach the lesson and write down reflections to share with their mentor.