How do you balance every day teaching with testing?
May 21st, 2008 Posted in Activote, Assessment and Learning, Classroom Ideas, Creativity in the classroom, Early Years and Primary, Expression, Margaret Allen, Personalised Learning, Professional Development and Training, Theory Into PracticeTeaching in a “SATS” year in the UK is always a challenge! The issue being how do you balance every day teaching needs with the continuous “eye” on that “week in May”. The same issue exists elsewhere, such as the USA, where you need to balance teaching with the benchmark testing used to measure it.
When you first meet your new class during those early days of September you are continually assessing and reflecting on individuals. As a natural progression of this, you identify ways of engaging individuals and plan lessons and activities which will benefit their learning needs.
The Assessment for Learning Agenda, which is similar around the world, encourages a partnership between teacher and pupil to meeting learning objectives uses words like responsibility, opportunity, discussion, reflection, review-time, self assessment, so why is it that we continue to put so much emphasis on testing!
“The process of learning has to be in the minds of both learner and teacher when assessment is planned and when the evidence is interpreted. Learners should become as aware of the ‘how’ of their learning as they are of the ‘what’.”
© Qualifications and Curriculum Authority http://www.qca.org.uk/907.html
A similar vision will be found everywhere where there are high expectations about teaching and learning and leading specialists such as Marzano & Associates and Grand Wiggins in the USA show how such approaches can impact standards and these ideas are central to curriculum transformation in a number of states. The ideas behind assessment is maturing - but the challenge is putting those ideas into practice in an environment where testing is still a central part of the process.
What can that look like in real life?
I would like to share with you a whole range of ways in which Learner Response Devices could ease the pressure, but also make it fun. Learner Response, or if you prefer Voting, could become the easy way in which we get summative assessment results. Tests can be set up in advance, electronically, and be sent to the school on the required days. The results are collected electronically exported into Excel or other data formats and can be seamlessly integrated into some sort of “Master Spreadsheet”.
Examples of assessments in Promethean Activprimary
There will still be an expectation on the teacher to deliver “testable” children, but surely this way we ease the burden?
Using this approach we can also start to think of more suitable ways of assessing our children throughout the year than end of unit tests
Towards instructional assessment and assessment FOR learning:
Formative assessment can sometimes be interpreted as the use of analysis of tests results - but it can be much more - it can be “instructional assessment” - where you can make use of classwide learner feedback within the teaching process itself to guide and direct instruction and personalise the learning by using the data to home in on the needs of each individual and the groups in the class.
Using formative assessment opportunities will allow a teacher to gain insight to each child’s level whenever it is needed. You can use the ‘ad hoc voting’ functionality - where you can ask questions ‘on the fly’ - to establish understanding and expose misconceptions that can be instantly addressed. More importantly this offer more creative ways in which we engage our children in being “tested” and they can see the assessment process as tool in the cycle of learning rather than a challenge to face at the end of it.
Teachers can also use Activote to gather pupil opinions, predictions and suggestions because not everyone likes to put their hand up. One of the strongest features of the way in which voting can be used is to generate discussion opportunities.
Instructional Assessment:
Mixing teaching and testing in the same activity.
In this example, the teacher is asking children to respond to a context. This is also known as Cloze procedure. By covering over the relevant words children generate word suggestions and then they all vote on which they feel is the most appropriate word. Results displayed are not about getting it right or wrong but are related much more to the different opinions of others. Asking children to justify their answers, offers yet another speaking opportunity.
Assessment to stimulate discussion and debate
Debate and discussion are not something that all children are comfortable with. The thought of articulating an opposing view can be very daunting.
Offering children the chance to vote before and after a discussion has taken place, may given them the confidence to contribute. This may help any future topics for debate as the children will begin to see that this scenario is the basis upon which most decisions are made.
Before and after responses:
Helping learners see how ideas take shape
Children’s understanding of right and wrong is paramount to their developing into responsible citizens of the future. The ability of the voting to engage pupils in discussion on a range of topics which can be carefully planned or can be introduced as part of any topic within any lesson.
Choices - Letting students take control of their learning
Character analysis which promotes discussion and justification will allow for a knowledge base of understanding which will support future writing.
- Who will be my hero?
- Who will be my victim?
- What will they be like?
A diagram combined with voting choices:
Towards self-assessment
Research has shown that children do benefit from formal feedback, but verbal discussion will have more impact than a written comment. Using Voting for pupil self-review allows a degree of ownership and commitment to target setting.
A self-evaluation rubric:
The teacher can see what each child thinks about their learning
If children are to evaluate their own progress they should be involved in the target setting. A range of techniques should be adopted to promote self assessment. It is important that teachers have data which informs future planning and that this information allows pupils to feel comfortable with their learning.
To that end, Promethean offers a family of Learner Response Devices
Choosing the right tools
- Activote - Deliberately simple to use (so that the technology doesn’t interfere with the Teaching and Learning), the system is equally effective in the Foundation Stage as it is within Higher Education.
- Activexpression - A unique learner response system with the ability to text complete sentences and numerical responses to the group display from all the individuals in a class. Instant confidence and agreement polls provide simple but powerful tools to help students reflect on their own learning.
4 Responses to “How do you balance every day teaching with testing?”
By Chris Stone on May 22, 2008
As a secondary maths teacher I often used a traffic light system prior to and at the end of a set of questions
(a) Red
(b) Amber
(c) Green
You can find these in your library images, or if you are feeling more adventurous you could make your own. (Once made you could keep them on your AS3 tool bar or in AP3 keep them in your library.
Students would vote on how they perceived their own understanding of the topic area they were about to be asked questions on, and then have the traffic light page at the end of the set of questions.
The flipchart would then look like 12 pages, the first being the initial traffic light page, then the 10 questions followed by a traffic light page at the end.
The reason for doing this was that when I looked at the summary of results on the flipchart page or exported to excel I could see how the student perceived their understanding prior to and after the 10 questions.
• Had the student underestimated their understanding at the beginning?
• Had the student over estimated their understanding at the beginning?
• Had their perception improved from the first traffic light the last?
• Did their results of correct and incorrect match their perception of understanding?
Students enjoyed the fact that they could make a self assessment of them selves.
I have shared this idea with many teachers and they will often said that they would try using some form self assessment prior to and at the end of a voting session.
By Dug on May 22, 2008
This is a very interesting post. It is a source of great sadness to me that, too often, a rich learning experience is sacrificed on the standards altar.
There is an inherent tension between a tests/standards agenda and a heartfelt belief in a broad, balanced, rich and constructivist learning experience. Are schools measured on their Music or Art standards in Keystage 2 (UK)? Are schools praised or beaten up on account of their sporting achievements? No. The testing, measuring and comparing is based on a very narrow (but nevertheless important) curriculum.
What does outstanding teaching and learning look like? Well, it doesn’t look like teaching to the test. It looks like the kinds of engagement, involvement with built in assessment for learning outlined in the post above. However, any outstanding teaching and learning involves an element of risk-taking. And risk-taking is the last thing that settings with low standards are prepared to do. When standards drop, what happens? The curriculum narrows, there is a back-to-basics approach, objectivist teaching and learning dominates over constructivist T&L and a downward spiral is almost inevitable.
Anyway, that rant aside, one of my attempts to steer some kind of middle ground whilst teaching Y6 children involved the creation of flipcharts that used past test papers and questions (using the QCA Testbase CDs). I aimed to incorporate ACTIVote into as many of the questions as possible. This had a multiple effect.
>It promoted discussion and dialogue that allowed misconceptions to be aired and addressed.
>It served as a tool for summative and formative assessment.
>It was a ‘fun’ and engaging approach to revision.
Having said all that, we still did less music, art, sport, dt etc in that test year than we should have. This was undoubtedly because of the results sword of Damocles hanging over my head.
>It was a ‘different’ way to sit a test!
By Tony Cann on May 22, 2008
In any activity we all need feedback in order to improve our performance. This feedback needs to be timely so that it is relevant to the current activity. In the class room it is important for both teachers and pupils. Both then learn. The teachers can improve and adjust their technique and the pupils can learn from their mistakes and from the answers of their peers as well as the teacher. Keeping records of the answers demonstrates what the pupils know and make the need for other forms of assessment less important. Summative assessment leaves less room for self improvement as it is too late. Research has shown that we learn better the more we are questioned but it is hard for teachers to increase the assessments. Learner response systems help solve this problem by being inclusive of all pupils, offering immediate feedback and automatically keeping records.
By John Self on May 22, 2008
Margaret’s last comment about children being involved in the assessment and target setting process has reminded me of a couple of recent instances of excellent practise using activ expression devices.
I was recently involved in a SATs booster day at South Leeds High School. As an amalgamation of two city schools, they understand the need for pupils to be active participants in their own learning. We delivered an hour long session to 109 Year 9 pupils, targeting level 5 and 6 shape and space. By simply taking camera shots of test base papers and allowing the children to send in answers using activ expression, we created an exciting and productive environment that allowed pupils to be very involved in the assessment process. They peer tutored during the session an even started to identify and correct misconceptions that occurred. The staff and the Head teacher Colin Bell were so impressed that they immediately started making enquiries about rolling the devices out across the core curriculum areas.
David Coulson-Lowes from Caldew school in Cumbria has recently used Activote to facilitate an assessment project whereby pupil’s work is levelled by their peers. A piece of work is presented to the class within the activstudio/activote environment and the pupils must level it based on the criteria that the teacher uses. This not only puts a fresh slant on the process but helps the pupils to better appreciate the quality of the work they should be producing.