Teach Primary Issue 18.6

www.teachwire.net | 53 T E ACH RE AD I NG & WR I T I NG O ver 25 years of teaching, I’ve seen many different assessment systems come and go; some faddish inspector- pleasers and others that genuinely contributed to the development of the learner. Recently, I’ve found that using Pause and Reflect tasks with my class has reinvigorated my approach to assessment. Purposefully integrating them into my teaching offers a holistic insight into the development of the children in my class. Pause and Reflect may be performed at an individual, group or whole-organisa- tion level. It can be carried out in a variety of ways, but essentially involves an ongoing process of: 1. Reflecting on existing practice, assessing pupil performance, and identifying areas for improvement. 2. Planning and implementing changes. 3. Reviewing the changes and the effect they have had. 4. Identifying what has been learned from the changes made and their effects. 5. Repeating the previous four steps. What’s the point? For Pause and Reflect tasks to be most effective, it’s important that they are considered and planned for at a medium-term level. This will ensure that they have a genuine purpose within the sequence of learning activities, making them more meaningful for the learners and easier to integrate into an already busy curriculum timetable. In the development of a Pause and Reflect task, teachers should consider it both from the point of view of the children, as the active participants, and themselves – what does the educator want or need to achieve from the changes made? When you’re assessing their performance, pupils must understand why they are engaging with each task; as the teacher, you must be clear about what form of understanding you’re hoping to assess. Having this level of clarity from the outset is essential, as you can only assess understanding if the children are purposefully engaging with a task that produces an output that a teacher can observe. Thinking about Stage 1 of the process as ‘What is your challenge?’ forces the teacher to be clear about their goals, also making them easier to explain to pupils. Marc Bowen explains how to plan and carry out purposeful activities for whole-class assessment AS S E S SMENT S P E C I A L PAUSE and reflect “Using Pause and Reflect tasks with my class has reinvigorated my approach to assessment”