Our pupils and staff are fully involved in deciding next steps in their learning and identifying who can help.
Our pupils and staff practise peer and self-assessment.
Curriculum areas: Literacy and English, secondary.
Project summary
The teachers involved wanted to use formative assessment to raise pupil attainment in their Higher English classes, particularly concentrating on developing pupils’ skills in the Close Reading and literature parts of the course.
They built on previous development work, which had taken place in the school and in the authority. They wanted to make lessons more interactive and suitable for a variety of different learning styles. They realised that to achieve their aim they needed to develop strategies to meet the following objectives:
- to share lesson outcomes and success criteria more effectively
- to use different questioning techniques
- to use a more structured approach to feedback by breaking tasks down into mini tasks
- to use peer and self-assessment with pupils.
The teachers therefore ensured that the learning intention and relevant success criteria were understood by pupils as a starting point for each lesson.
They used strategies like think, pair, and share, templates, games and other interactive techniques to engage pupils more in responses to questions.
They found that using comments-only marking, modelling and setting aside time for pupil remediation led to pupils feeling more confident and more able to make improvements to their work.
They found that pupils responded well to using two stars and a wish as one technique for peer assessment and that it led to collaborative learning and pupils taking on more responsibility for learning. Pupils also were encouraged to self-assess using traffic lighting and learning logs.
Each pair/group became responsible for addressing bullet points in the plan for the mini essay. Their enthusiasm increased as they could all contribute to a part of the essay. In addition, early on, I included the element of peer assessment. Each group completed a paragraph, which was then put up on the screen, and quickly became familiar with the jingle: ‘Two Stars and a Wish’. This has been a very positive strategy. It made pupils look at others’ work in a very positive way, while at the same time encouraged them to think about ways of improving the work of their peers. Also, by focusing first of all on a paragraph, and discussing how well this paragraph integrated the elements of Understanding, Analysis and Evaluation, we then took a step-by-step approach and gradually progressed to pairs/groups, producing mini essays and finally a full critical essay. Modelling good pieces of work, which were photocopied for the rest of the class, also helped less able pupils to learn from their peers.
I knew straight away that for this to work effectively I would need to provide pupils with a relevant framework and guidelines to complete it. The first steps naturally had been made, as pupils were aware of the lesson aims and success criteria. Therefore they knew exactly what they were looking for.
In literature, I created a structured peer assessment sheet that related to particular mini tasks. I tried to make this as consistent as possible throughout the year, and most pupils responded very well to it. In this area I also felt that it was important that pupils felt that they were not responsible for marking another pupil’s work, so I focused on the identification of topic sentences, evidence, analysis and evaluation. Then an overall comment was invited through to stars and a wish – two positive points and something that could be improved. Pairings were changed frequently and comments tended to be constructive.
Pupils’ comments
‘Peer assessment was really helpful to me and I found by the end of the year that my confidence in this area had grown.’
‘Peer assessment was useful because I got to read other people’s work and it meant that I thought more about what I had written/ learned. The template for this was useful because in the past when I had done this, I wasn’t sure what to do.’
‘Peer assessment was something I was not sure about at first, but as the year progressed I felt more and more comfortable with it. I learned so much through working with others, and I felt great the first time I realised something my partner should have done but hadn’t. It made me consolidate my own knowledge. The template helped me maintain a structure.’
Points to consider
- The teachers in this project identified the need for peer and self-assessment to be based on a shared understanding of the learning intentions and success criteria. How can this be built into lessons in your classroom?
- An important part of the strategy of this group of teachers was to break down tasks into small sections for interactive activities. How could you apply this approach in your own subject?
- This group used templates to help pupils to peer assess focusing on specific aspects of the work. How could your pupils be supported to learn the skills of peer assessment?
Date posted March 2007
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