Assessment for Learning and
Development
Considering approaches that make
provision effective for all learners

Session aims
• To develop ideas about opportunities for
formative assessment within planning and
teaching.
• To extend understanding of Assessment for
Learning.

There is a cycle
• Start by recognising what
they know already
• You facilitate
new/expanded
knowledge and
understanding
• You evaluate their
‘receiving’ (and your
‘giving’)
• You plan where to go next
in their learning

(Detailed) Planning
opportunities for
learning
What do I want the
children to learn?
Effective teaching
Teacher employing
a range of
strategies
facilitating
opportunities to
learn.
Subject research
Reflection and
consideration of
‘where next’
Sensitive and
focused
assessment
Feedback to
learner

What do learners & teachers need to know?
• Learners need to know:
– where they are in their learning
– where they are going
– how to get there
• Teachers need to know
– where students are in their learning
– what to do about it

Assessment for Learning Strategies
• How are you going to check to see if learning is taking place?
For example, are you going to provide a short peer
assessment moment, where pupils use the given criteria to
make judgments about their partner’s work?
• Are you going to ask for responses from all, or target your
chosen pupils for that lesson who represent your ‘working
towards’, ‘achieving’, or ‘working beyond’? Are you going to
use layers of questioning to search for deeper understanding?
• How will you extract the information you need, to know how
to proceed? AfL will guide your decision about provision

Assessment for learning
10 Principles
1. is part of effective planning
2. focuses on how students learn
3. is central to classroom practice
4. is a key professional skill
5. has an emotional impact
6. affects learner motivation
7. promotes commitment to learning goals and assessment
criteria
8. helps learners know how to improve
9. encourages self-assessment
10. recognises all achievements

The Four basic Elements of AfL:
• Sharing Learning Goals
• Effective Questioning
• Self and peer evaluation
• Effective feedback
You need to be able to utilise these

Sharing Learning objectives
How might you present
these LOs to children:
1) To explore narrative
order and identify and
map out the main
strategies of a story
2) To be able to use and
apply doubling and
halving.
3) To recognise numbers to
10.

Supporting children to become self-evaluative
• Explain purpose
• Display a range of self-evaluative questions for the end of lessons
• Model possible answers children might have to the self-evaluative
questions: ‘I think some of you might say you’re most pleased with . .
.’ etc.
• After modelling, choose one question for the end of a lesson and link
it with the learning intention: ‘What are you most pleased with about
understanding pushing and pulling forces?
• Allow thinking time
• Use a variety of approaches: whole class, paired or group
• Avoid getting children to write self-evaluations (their thinking may be
reduced to what is easy to write)
(Clarke, 2001)

Peer assessment
Key features
• Pupils provide feedback on
others’ work.
• Can be a bridge between teacher
assessment and self assessment
• A stage in the process of helping
pupils become confident and
skilled in self-assessment
Peer assessment for learning
• Asking pupils to look at
examples of other pupils’ work
can help them to understand
what was required from a task
and to assess the next steps
they might need to take
• Can also help pupils understand
the different approaches they
could have taken to the task

Key questions...
If you wanted to implement peer assessment in a
particular class, what forward planning would be required?
How would you set about preparing pupils so that they
could assess each other’s work effectively?
Consider the likely concerns of pupils and parents with
regard to peer assessment.
How would you reassure them about the use of peer
assessment?

GIVING FEEDBACK
'The most powerful single moderator that
enhances achievement is feedback'
Verbal
Written
Non-verbal
[J. Hattie]

Lesson Evaluation
• Firstly, did the children learn what you hoped
they would learn? If they did, what helped
them? If they didn’t, why not?
• Secondly, what might you need to provide
next lesson that extends or presents the
learning in a different way?
• Thirdly, did you ‘perform’ well against your
personal targets? How does this inform your
own learning and personal plan of action

Assessment of a
child's needs
and strengths
should be at the
heart of the
teaching process
Remember the ongoing cyclical relationship
between planning, teaching and assessment

Assessment for learning and formative
assessment in action?
Imagine that you are observing the lesson and
evaluating the teacher’s and children’s use of
assessment for learning – evaluate the lesson in
terms of assessment methods and ideas. Consider
the teacher’s role
Sample lesson.
http://www.tes.co.uk/teaching-resource/Formative-
Assessment-1-6083012/

Follow up from today:
Hargreaves, E. (2005)
‘Assessment for
Learning? Thinking
outside the black box’.
Cambridge Journal of
Education. Vol. 35, No 2,
June 2005, pp. 213-224
Before the next EV682
session:
Burn, A. & Durran, J. (2007)
‘Animation, Moving Image
Literacy and Creativity’ in
Media Literacy in Schools:
Practice Production and
Progression, London: Paul
Chapman