Assessment
and Marking
(a)
THE AIMS OF MARKING AND ASSESSMENT
Assessment is a valuable teaching process.
Assessment is essential so pupils know how they are doing, AND what they need to do to improve.
Assessment is an essential
process to allow teachers to improve, to know their pupils and plan lessons
effectively
In
line with the School Policy on marking and feedback, it is important that work
is marked regularly, consistently, and that appropriate feedback is given to
enable the student to develop within the subject. Marking and assessment forms
an integral part of teaching and learning and is to be done regularly.
Assessments will be built into all History study units. It will be done by
observing pupils at work, by question and answer sessions, talking and listening
to students and by examining work produced. A variety of assessment methods will
be adopted including individual written tasks, group work, oral work, fieldwork
and information technology.
Marking
is finding a balance between encouraging pupils, correcting their work and
setting them targets.
Marking
must be seen as the major provider of feedback to pupils. This feedback can be
given in a number of ways, such as
a)
Oral feedback - This can be both formal and informal when transient
remarks am given to pupils to reassure, cajole or point the way to further
efforts and attainment, Oral feedback should be interactive with the pupil
engaging in conversation. Oral feedback on a one to one basis is very effective.
You do not know what a pupil can do and understand until you've heard what
they've said.
b)
Written feedback - Scores, grades, levels, comments etc. can have a major
impact on the pupil's reaction to learning. This type of marking should aim to
provide information to the pupil about their achievement and also what they have
to do to improve their work and make further progress.
c)
Group/ individual feedback - This type of feedback can be given to the
whole class, a group or an individual and still impact upon future learning.
Marking work has several obvious benefits:
(i) Students often spend a great deal of time and effort on their work and expect, with reason, some recognition of that effort.
(ii) Marking can act as a means of encouragement, especially with combined with good, positive comments
(iii) Marking, with appropriate feedback, can help the student understand how to develop the quality of their answers. Students often find it difficult to measure the amount of detail or to appreciate the level of quality required. Marking work and explaining how it can be improved, helps students to appreciate the criteria required to gain the higher grades or marks.
(iv) Marking helps to build up a picture of a student’s performance over a period of time. This helps the teacher, and other concerned parties, to build up a picture of the student’s academic progress and to identify particular concerns.
(v) Having an accurate record of a student’s progress helps the teacher to write meaningful comments on reports and to offer careful advice on how that student can progress within the subject.
(vi) Parents can monitor a student’s progress and this helps them to understand any problems or concerns raised by the teacher or the School.
(vii) It is very useful for a teacher taking over a group, to be able to ascertain whether a particular student is performing at an acceptable level by examining past performance.
(viii) In subjects where particular pieces of work are designed to test certain skills, the teacher can immediately see how a student is performing within a particular skill area, or if there is a particular problem across a whole class or a whole year group with a particular skill area. This can help the teacher to evaluate the method of teaching and / or the resources being used and to adopt them in light of the marks gained by the students.
(ix) To help moderate the interpretation of learning objectives.
(x) To aid curriculum planning.
(b)
THE IMPORTANCE OF CONSISTENCY
Students
are quick to identify certain members of staff who are “hard markers” or who
“give everyone an A”. This can, quite reasonably, cause problems across a
year group when different teachers are awarding marks using their own criteria
and the students feel that this is unfair. A bright student with a hard-marking
teacher could feel aggrieved if she receives a lower mark than an average
student who has a teacher who awards high marks.
It
is important that students feel there is consistency in marking across a
department.
The
best way to achieve this degree of consistency is to follow clearly laid down
and agreed criteria for marking.
In
accordance with School Policy, the marking system should follow a set pattern of
using grades. These grades should conform to the criteria laid down in the
School Policy. In this way parents and students know exactly what it means when
a student receives a particular grade and the grade awarded by any member of the
department means exactly the same, eg an A awarded by any member of the
department means very good work.
At
KS4 and KS5, marking schemes within the department should reflect the criteria
as laid down by the examination boards.
It
is important that students understand these criteria.
At
KS4 this is best achieved by explaining Levels of Response marking to students
and adopting techniques such as marking one another’s work with the marking
scheme.
At KS5, copies of the marking criteria are published on the website and students should be made aware of these, either through direction to the website or the department giving a copy of these criteria to each student.
(c)
FEEDBACK
Most
students focus on the mark and do not always read any comments associated with
the mark.
This
does not mean that such comments are useless. Comments are important for several
reasons:
(i) They help the student to understand why they have received a particular grade. Giving a student a B grade in several pieces of work does nothing to help that student understand why they have received a B grade and how they can progress beyond a B grade to a higher level.
(ii) Comments are designed to enable students to make progress. Helpful comments can aid the learning process, eg telling a student that they have a B grade because they make unsubstantiated comments and that they need to support their points with carefully selected evidence, allows the student to (a) identify why they only received a B; (b) understand how they can progress within the subject or within a particular skill area, in this case by developing their answers and justifying their points, rather than making unsupported assertions.
(iii) They enable teachers to monitor progress. If a student gets a B for the next assignment, the teacher can be alerted to the fact that this student is not progressing in this lesson and that they may need further help as they are not responding to the advice given. It may alert the teacher to the fact that the student may simply not understand what the comment means, in this case the student may not understand how to substantiate an answer, and may need to be given further guidance.
(iv) When writing reports, staff can see the comments that have been made and will have a better understanding of particular problems and how far the student has made progress over a period of time in these areas. These make reports more meaningful and useful.
(d)
THE STUDENT’S UNDERSTANDING OF ASSESSMENT
Awarding
marks has many benefits, but the main reason MUST be to inform the student, so
that she can progress within the subject.
It
is important, therefore, that any marking system is clearly understood by the
students.
It
is reasonable to expect a student who has received a grade C to be able to
explain what that means. Clearly students are given the School’s marking
scheme and so should know what a particular grade means, but this can only be
the case where consistency is maintained across the department and is in
accordance with the criteria laid down by the School.
At
KS4 students will gain an awareness of grades from looking at examples of work
and mark schemes. This will help them to understand the criteria, as laid down
by the Board, for particular grades.
At KS5 students will have access to the criteria used by the Board for the assessment of documents and essays, and this will ensure that they can at any time look at the grade awarded in collaboration with the assessment criteria, and appreciate why they were awarded a particular grade. Clearly it is to be expected that a teacher would also make suitable comments on the work, allowing the student to appreciate the grade and to understand how to make progression.
(e)
HOW WORK IS MARKED
It
is expected that a large proportion of the student’s work will be marked by
the teacher. However, the focus of such assessment should be to allow the
students to identify why they received a particular mark or grade and how they
can make progress within the subject.
The
department has adopted several strategies to achieve this:
(i) Students marking other students work – students should be given the assessment criteria and should use this to grade the work. This helps students to understand how work is assessed and the criteria used. It helps them to identify what they need to do to progress within the lesson by seeing what they needed to do to attain the higher grades.
(ii) Students marking assessment material within a group and discussing it. This is particularly useful at GCSE. Students are given copies of scripts produced by the Board and given the assessment criteria and the actual marking scheme. They mark the work independently using the materials and then discuss the marks awarded and the justification for their marks. This helps the students to appreciate the marking policy for GCSE questions and to identify those elements within particular questions that are essential to good marks, e.g bringing in their own knowledge when evaluating sources, looking at both sides of an argument, supporting their conclusions.
(iii) Reporting back to students. Students are asked to research a topic and then to present that topic to the rest of the group and answer any questions. The students then feedback on how well they understood the presentation and how well their questions were answered. This helps students to appreciate how important it is to present their information well so that it is immediately understandable by whoever reads it.
(f) THE ASSESSMENT SHEET GIVEN TO KS3 STUDENTS
HOW DO WE ASSESS YOUR WORK?
(a)
We use a system of A to E to mark work
(b)
Each grade means something:
A
---- This means that your work is of a veryy high standard (sometimes you will
see a + sign with the A. If you get A+ it means that your work is brilliant)
B
--- This means that your work is of a good standard. Most of what you have
written or produced is very good, but you may have missed something out, or made
some careless mistakes, or not developed some points, which prevents you from
getting an A)
C
--- This means that your work is satisfactoory. However, it does mean that there
is scope for improvement (and you will see that the teacher has written a
comment next to the grade to tell you how you can improve. You should read these
comments carefully and act on them next time.)
D
--- This means that your work is not satisffactory. There could be several
reasons for this. It may be that you have rushed your work, or that you have
written very brief answers which do not really answer the questions asked.
Again, the teacher will explain why you have achieved this grade and you should
take note of these comments.
E
– This means that your work is of such poor quality that we want you to do it
again. The teacher will explain what is wrong with it by adding a comment and
telling you that you need to re-do this piece of work after taking note of the
comments.
(c)
You may get a grade with a + or a – sign next to it. This means that either
you have just missed getting the higher grade (e.g. B+ means you have just
missed an A; whilst B- means that you have only just achieved a B grade and were
close to the C grade).
(d)
Comments will usually be placed on your work to help you understand what you can
do to improve. However, in some cases, the teacher may not add a comment, or may
write just one or two words, for example when the work is Excellent. Sometimes
the teacher may go over the work with the whole group and explain how it can be
improved. You can add comments to your work so that you know what you can do to
improve.
(g)
SHOULD EVERY PIECE OF WORK BE MARKED?
Marking should be used as a tool to help progress within the teaching and learning framework. However, it is not possible in History to mark every single piece of work well (there is usually too much writing) – so don’t! Trying to do so will result in no work being marked well – which is not effective for pupils or staff. Be selective but make sure pupils are aware what you mark and when it will be done by. Ensure this deadline is stuck to.
This means that sometimes there is no point in marking work. Examples of where it would not be appropriate to mark work include:
(i) At KS5 the group work together with the teacher to produce a framework for an essay. Clearly the finished product will be constructed with the aid of the teacher and will be an example of how a particular essay could be approached. There would be no point in marking this as every student would have the same piece of work and it would simply be a template rather than a student produced individual assignment.
(ii) At KS4 students make notes on a topic using the textbook and/or internet. Whilst it would be reasonable for the teacher to go over the notes within the class to ensure that everyone has good accurate notes, it would be unreasonable to then expect the teacher to individually mark every set of notes.
(h)
SHOULD EVERY PIECE OF WORK HAVE COMMENTS?
Within
subjects like History, subject teachers often find that they teach whole
classes, rather than smaller sets as in other subjects, and that they teach more
students as they have more teaching groups since the number of lessons allocated
to history is 2 per form in years 7-9, whereas other subjects teach less groups
as they teach each group more than 2 periods a week. This often results in some
members of the department teaching 20% or more the number of students taught by
some other members of staff.
Clearly
this can place an intolerable burden in terms of marking on a particular member
of staff.
It
is, therefore, unreasonable to expect that member of staff to write detailed
comments on every piece of work produced by every girl in every class.
The following guidelines should, therefore, be followed:
(i) Where the whole group has achieved either good or bad marks, feedback can take the form of a whole class discussion about how well they did or focusing on what went wrong and how they can overcome such problems in future.
(ii) Where a student consistently produces superlative work, it is reasonable to simply write superlative on much of her work, but where possible, to outline how she could stretch herself even further. This does not need to be done on every piece of work, but, for example, where the student is studying Russia, the teacher could periodically make suggestions such as encouraging the student to read literature centred around the events being studied, eg Pasternak, Solzhenitsyn or Rybakov, to give a greater insight into attitudes toward the Revolution, the Gulags or life in a part of Moscow during the Purges.
(iii) Where a student consistently produces poor work, it may be more useful for the teacher to arrange to see the student on a one-to-one basis to discuss problems and to give individual help, rather than make long comments in the book every time, which may only serve to demoralise the student even further.
(iv) It is also acceptable for a teacher to go over work with the whole class where there is a mixed quality of answers. Students can be encouraged to add to their answers or even make their own comments about what they need to do in future to progress within the subject.
(h)
THE USE OF REPORTS TO PARENTS
Reports
will be issued to parents according to the School’s reporting timetable.
Comments will include references to where performance can be improved, as well
as statements about the individual's achievement. Copies of reports will be
stored centrally.
(i)
GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF ASSESSMENT AND MARKING
1.
Careful thought is given to the purpose of assessment, adopting a wide
range of methods to reflect the History Curriculum and learning opportunities.
2.
Assessment is an integral part of the teaching and learning process, a
valuable formative tool. Throughout the course of KS 3 pupils will do a number
of different pieces of assessment work. These are to be included within the
planning of the schemes of work.
3.
The outcome of assessment can modify teaching methods, provide feedback,
as well as indicate student progress.
4.
We recognise the potential for assessment in developing a positive self
image in the student from positive and constructive feedback and the feeling of
success which encourages further study.
5.
Teachers in the department use a common framework for marking work that
is fully understood by all the team.
6.
Results of assessment are reported in a way useful for student, teacher,
parents and other interested parties.
7.
Assessment gradually builds up into a profile for each student
over the whole of KS3.
8.
Students are encouraged to be aware of the evidence and assessment
techniques being used and review their own progress by a procedure containing an
element of self-assessment. Staff should therefore allow pupils to self-assess.
This is a vital process. If pupils can be taught how to recognise the different
levels in their work they are more likely to reach higher levels in their own
work. Also peer marking is highly useful. Get pupils to mark their own. Pass the
work to the teacher who redistributes them RANDOMLY so a friend is not marking
them. Remark the work, and explain why they have given it the level they have
and why they agree/disagree with the original mark. Pass work back to author
where once again it is remarked. Now what does the author think. Can they defend
their original mark? This process has been found to boost attainment, and to get
pupils thinking a lot more critically.
9.
Assessment has a common procedure and should:
A.
give teachers' judgements which are as valid and reliable as possible and
are mutually consistent.
B.
give teachers confidence
in their professional judgement and skill.
C.
be fair to students.
10.
Assessment records should provide confidence between teachers across
phases and enhance progression for students.
11.
Recognition should be given by management for the time and
resource implications of good assessment and due allowance made for this in the
construction of the teachers' working day.
(j)
Strategies for marking
(i)
Staff should encourage pupils to mark their own work, on certain occasions,
against criteria given by the teacher. Where appropriate, the teacher then marks
the work and the pupil is able to see if they have applied the criteria
correctly. Any discrepancies can be shared through one to one discussions.
Marking
should be done to the learning objectives of the lesson
Classwork
and homework must be marked regularly giving feedback which indicates the level
of performance and any improvements that can be made.
The
Department should identity formally assessed work at least once each half-term.
Comments must be made to inform pupils exactly what they have to do make
progress At Key stage 4, formally assessed work should be given a GCSE Grade or
equivalent and again comments must be made to inform pupils exactly what they
have to do to make progress. At KS5, formally assessed work should be marked in
accordance with the criteria laid down by the Examination Board. All students
will have a copy of this document.
Staff
should keep careful records of pupils' marks highlighting dates of formal
assessment