Tag: assessment

#mainedu: An update

Having just received the marks for Module 1: School-based Enquiry (Merit) and Module 3: Developing eLearning (Distinction) of the Masters in Education I am studying towards, I felt that it was time to post an update.

Module 1: School-based Enquiry

A long and thin module that began in September and finished in June, it afforded me the opportunity to conduct a detailed classroom-based investigation. I found writing the essay to be quite difficult. With far too much to say, I felt that the resulting essay was some what disjointed. As such I feel that the garde I achieved was more a reflection of that than the actual research that I conducted. Moreover, on reflection the focus I chose for the module was perhaps too broad.

Researching into the impact Google Docs can have on formative assessment was, however, thoroughly enjoyable. It has left me convinced that Google Docs is a perfect tool to develop meaningful AfL practices with students in the Secondary English and Media Studies classrooms. Furthermore, it added validation to a number of conclusions I had already begun to make.

While the grade I achieved does not measure up to the high standards I set in Module 2 or Module 3, this unit taught me more about how to conduct effective classroom-based research and collect data than either of the other two. I believe that this learning process will stand me in good stead as I begin the preparations towards my thesis later in the year.

You can read the assignment here: Does the collaborative functionality of Google Docs allow educators to better put formative assessment at the heart of their students’ learning?

Further information about the module is available here.

Module 3: Developing eLearning

This was (perhaps unsurprisingly) the most enjoyable module of the three I undertook. It certainly played to my strengths, exploring a significant amount of material that I was already well versed in. While this could have negatively impacted on my enjoyment, it actually resulted in providing me with an opportunity to debate and test ideas that I have held for some time.

Like Module 2: Assessment for Learning, this unit ended up being quite personal, giving me the opportunity to evaluate existing practices and to challenge myself to put my money where my mouth is – considering the real benefits of using technology in the classroom. I set my stall out to challenge myself to develop a ReLP that incorporated technologies, enhancing the learning/progress of my students.

The project incorporated iPads + Garageband, Moodle and Google Docs. Writing the essay was far easier, the process of reflection and evaluation in this case was more straightforward. Moreover, learning from the School-based Enquiry, I did a better job of collating and selecting evidence to analyse.

The assignment is available to read here: Design, construct and evaluate a re-usable learning object or process that fulfils a relevant curriculum objective and responds to the learning needs of your pupils. Include a commentary to provide context and explanation of the considerations that you took into account, including relevant points from the literature. References and appendices are here.

More information about the module is available here.

Should you wish to discuss any aspect of the research that I undertook in any of the Modules I have completed, please don’t hesitate to comment below. Alternatively, you can get in touch via email or Twitter.

Communicative Relationships: The Purpose of Assessment

This post is intended as a contribution to the latest Purpos/ed campaign: #purosedassess.

Based on the work I have been doing in my classroom and research I completed towards my MA, I have come to the conclusion that the ultimate purpose of assessment is to help learners develop effective lines of communication. What you might call ‘communicative relationships’. The learner who can talk with their teacher, their peers and themselves about their learning will care less about what grade they got and more about what they need to do to improve.

If we consider Dylan Wiliam’s ‘aspects of formative assessment’ (2010) we can discern that there are three specific communicative relationships that are being established…

Wiliam SSAT Aspects of Formative Assessment

The first communicative relationship is between learner and teacher. It’s important that the teacher helps the learner to understand what it is they are trying to achieve. It is also important that the teacher (as expert) provide feedback, helping the learner to understand where they are at and how to progress. This is a relationship that needs to be carefully cultivated, managing expectations and establishing trust. Often, this can go wrong. Many teachers fall into the trap of feeling the need to meet the inherent expectations that I see in most learners: “The teacher is the person I go to for help; they are the expert and should always know the answers.” The problem with this is, the teacher will not always be there to provide the answers nor will they necessarily have them.

The second communicative relationship is between the learner and their peers. This relationship helps the learner to clarify their understanding and also to realise that knowledge and skills can be developed through collaboration and inquisition; not reliant on the presence of an expert. This relationship is (IMO) the most important. When we leave the confines of academic study, it is our peers who we turn to the most, be it in the work place or our personal lives.

The third communicative relationship is between the learner and themselves. Arguably, a by-product of the second relationship. If enough opportunities for discussion, collaboration, reflection and evaluation have been offered, in a supportive environment, then I believe that all learners can develop invaluable meta-cognitive skills. Like the first relationship, trust is of high importance here. Trusting yourself is difficult. It takes time to reach a point where you can be effectively self-critical, where you can trust your own judgement. Helping learners to do this is the final piece of the puzzle in helping them to become independent learners.

I suspect (and hope) that these communicative relationships occur regularly in many classrooms. What is missing is the explicit and open linking of these lines of communication, resulting in richer/deeper learning.

Connecting Communicative Relationships (How I link ‘aspects of formative assessment’):

At the start of a lesson I inform the student’s about what they are going to be learning. I then offer them some possible ways of doing this and involve them in a discussion where we decide as a collective group on the best way to proceed. As well as developing the communication between the learner and the teacher, it gives them ownership over their learning. A skill that I often return to with my students is how to write effective analytical paragraphs. I often extend the initial discussion to get them to establish with each other the success criteria for such an activity. This gives them further ownership over their learning and blends the first and second communicative relationships. With this specific activity I may then model an effective paragraph, communicating clearly what success will look like. In doing such an activity I will always keep talking and asking questions involving the learner in the process.

Too often, students are asked to do a piece of assessment, the work is either teacher assessed, peer-assessed or self-assessed, then put away; often never looked at again. This is something that I have learned to avoid. Instead I will plan the lesson (and often times, subsequent lessons/homework) to include opportunities for a single piece of work to be re-visited and all three types of assessment to take place. The different lines of communication offer the learner different, equally valuable, insights into their work.

Early on with my classes I will arrange the learning in such a way that I assess their work first. This line of communication is pivotal early on as the expert needs to model what effective assessment looks like. I will then allot some time for them to reflect on this and to make amendments. Having made their amendments I will then ask them to peer-assess each others work. This will usually be in specific reference to the criteria they established earlier on. Again, this is followed by an opportunity to reflect and amend. Finally, I ask them to assess their work themselves before making final improvements. They can start to trust their own judgement based on the modelling and sharing that has already occurred.

Time is not an excuse, this approach can be easily managed as a whole lesson or as smaller parts across a series of lessons. What’s important is the development of the communicative relationships and the opportunities to reflect and amend the work. As my students trust themselves and each other more, I push the second and third communicative relationships to the front of the queue, more and more reserving my judgement for later. While I don’t like it, we are part of an exam driven system and I won’t be there at the end to help them. By removing my input from the beginning of the assessment process they are developing the skills they need to be able to assess and evaluate their own work. Those internal conversations are imperative in the examination hall and will be imperative when they leave school.

If we value these different communicative relationships in their own right then isn’t it obvious that they can be strengthened when connected? Take the time to look carefully at your lesson planning. Are you developing communicative relationships that can foster effective learning and assessment? You probably are… all you need to do is acknowledge them and connect them. The outcome will be a strategy that has more to do with assessment for learning rather than assessment of learning.

Google Docs in the Classroom – A Discussion

To help clarify my thoughts while writing my School-based Enquiry, I decided it would be helpful to discuss the use of Google Docs in the classroom with a fellow teacher. Oliver Quinlan has been using Google Docs in much the same way as I have and he kindly agreed to be interviewed over Skype. The interview quickly turned into more of a discussion and we ended up talking for 35 minutes. I have broken up the recording into four parts for manageable listening however should you wish to download and listen to a single file, follow this link.

In the discussion we cover everything from collaboration, assessment, live marking, setting up, Google Apps, Moodle, wikis, forums and Google+.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Related posts:

3 things I do every (school) day that make me a better teacher

1. Read at least one article/blog post about teaching and learning.

As an English teacher it is probably a little predictable that I read a lot, however I believe that it is important to keep up with what is happening in education. I have also learned as many of us do that teaching is a busy and time consuming affair, therefore I don’t often find extended periods of time to read. Instead, I use a small number of apps and devices to bring reading material to me in a manageable way. This includes Google reader as an RSS aggregator and apps such as Reeder and Instapaper which I access on my MBP and HTC Wildfire respectively. I save and export longer articles/papers to read on my Sony Reader. Without going in to too much detail here, this combination of devices allows me to read at whatever point of the day I am free to or feel like doing so. Hotspots are: on the bus (7:30 – 7:45) heading to work and when school has just ended (3:40 – 4:00).

I am of the mind set that the best teachers are those who not only work hard on their day-to-day classroom teaching but also continue to keep up with pedagogical ideas, theories, new technologies and what other teachers are doing in their classrooms. When I talk to other teachers on Twitter or at conferences they tend to fit in with this description and in turn tend to be innovative in their practice, open to new ideas and are ready to discuss and share their opinion about education. Reading, for me, is an integral part of this dialogue. It is important to be informed.

2. Make sure one of my lessons is not teacher directed.

Two issues here. 1. Teaching from the front of the classroom (lecture style) is a sure fire way to kill creativity, learning and can lead very quickly to behavioural issues. 2. Teaching from the front of the classroom is a sure fire way to drain yourself of energy and enthusiasm for what you are teaching. At the beginning of each week I review what I have planned to teach and then set about planning into each of my days a lesson (with a different class each day) where, after sharing the learning intentions and explaining what is to be achieved, I shut up and spend the majority of the lesson sat with my students helping and supporting them with their learning.

I use these lessons in a variety of ways, here are a couple of examples:

  • Targeted support: I will group the class by ability and select a group to work with. During the lesson I will dedicate my time to that group – putting trust in the other students to get on and complete the work unaided. Some of the ways that I ensure the students are engaged in the work is by giving them a choice of what to do, in turn giving them ownership of their learning. I usually also set some sort of feedback exercise (not necessarily with me involved) where they are being relied upon to provide information. This allows me to then focus my time on the students I have decided to offer some more personal support to.
  • Assessment: I believe it is important to assess students work with them so that they can understand the process and what I am looking for. If certain students have been making the same errors repeatedly I will use these non-teacher led lessons to sit with them and will mark their work throughout the lesson with them, almost as a form of 1-2-1 (directed) learning. As they try to tackle the ideas or skills they have been struggling with I can address them and get them to work through, making corrections. This is time consuming and I don’t get around to all of the students in a single lesson but the level of learning and progress that takes place is very high. Over the course of the year every student who needed this level of support will have gotten it.

To some this may not seem completely fair and that some students may not get the same level of personal input from me. However, I do not have a problem with this and even tell my classes at the beginning of the year that some of them will get more out of me than others. What I also explain though is that I am not the fountain of all knowledge, that I will help them to understand where to look for answers so that they can solve problems for themselves. I also explain that for some of them I will simply be a facilitator, for others they will need my knowledge and expertise. They are all starting at different points and the better I know them, the better I can adapt the way that I support them as individuals.

3. Stop and take a break.

I make sure that I use either the 20 minute break time or the 50 minute lunch time each day to stop and switch off from what I have been doing and am going to be doing that day. Where possible I try to do this at lunch however, I teach during lunch time on a Friday. Why do I do this? Becuase, education is my career but it does not define me and I am certainly not going to let it kill me. Teaching is intense. Particularly when you are dedicated. Therefore, it is important to give yourself a mental break. I achieve this in a variety of ways. I may simply sit somewhere in silence; other times I may sit and read or surf the net; and on some occasions I will go sit with others and catch up on the gossip. Whatever, I do I try to make sure that it has nothing to do with school.

To those teachers who say “I simply have no time to take a break”, I say: “you are doing something wrong then!” The most important thing to learn as a teacher is how to do each of the many different tasks that make up your day in both the most effective but least time consuming manner. This could be:

  • using ‘assessment stickers’ that can be filled in with a few letters, numbers or ticks instead of writing out long paragraphs at the end of a student’s work.
  • keeping an electronic mark book instead of a paper one – easily copied for use with other classes.
  • setting extended homework projects that challenge your students but do not require that you are mark homework every couple of days.
  • using peer assessment more often to make your students more critical learners while lightening your marking load.
  • to collaborate with someone else on a scheme of work. You will not have to produce every single resource and your students will benefit from the ideas of two teachers, not just one.

There are many ways to cut down on your workload while ensuring that the learning in your classroom is engaging and effective. Putting just a few of these ideas in to practice would ensure that you have time to take that break. It is important to switch off. After all, you are only human contrary to popular belief! 🙂

School-based Enquiry: Google docs & AfL

I attended my third MA session this evening; the first session of Module 2: Assessment for Learning. Unlike Module 1: School-based Enquiry, this module centres around reading and secondary research. After receiving my ‘Module Reader’ it prompted me to knuckle down this evening and try to finish refining the focus of my School-based Enquiry.

While I have had a clear idea of what I wanted to focus on it has been quite difficult to put it concisely into words. I feel that I am close and hope that writing this post will help me to add further clarity.

It is my intention to investigate the impact Google docs can have on assessment for learning. I wish to build upon and refine practices that I put in place last year. With careful thought given to the pedagogy, I believe that Google docs can transform assessment for learning, making it more efficient and effective for students; increasing the rate of progress that they make.

One of the keys to this is the ability to re-use a piece of students writing multiple times  – conducting self, peer, and teacher based assessment; each time allowing the student to develop and improve their work. This continual input combined with the ability to re-edit without ‘recreating’ the writing, each time, puts greater emphasis on the learning than on the assessment. This is arguably the most important feature of AfL; too often neglected in favour of grades and target setting with little consideration given to what the student should do with that information. The response can be instant rather than: “Here is your target, think about that next time we do assessment”. I am saying: “Here is how you have done, now edit your document, correcting, adding, deleting, changing etc…”

Using Google docs in this way removes the dreaded ‘red pen’; removes the finality of assessed work on paper; and in my own experience – removes the urge to stick a grade on the work. The process is more that of author, working through a draft, editing and refining their work. The feedback from peers and teacher take on equal status, acting as the voice of the editor with the student able to acknowledge the criticisms and act upon them focussing on learning and improvement.

Have you used Google docs to support assessment for learning? If you have, I would love to hear about how you used it and what the outcomes were. Please respond to this post or send me an @reply on Twitter using the following hash tag: #mainedu.