Teach Secondary Issue 13.6

Kit Betts-Masters explains how the stories told by your assessment data can lead to constructive learning conversations with your students D elivering training to trainees and ECTs never fails to rekindle the enthusiasm I have for teaching – even for some of the more mechanical things we do in school. If you’re not all that interested in data, feel free to… keep reading. Because really, you should care about the power that today’s cutting edge analytical tools now afford us. Not complex, but valid During a session on assessment I led recently, the trainees and ECTs in attendance loved the idea of using data to inform their learning conversations with individual students, in ways that could tell the story of each kid’s progress, and provide themwith a detailed understanding of exactly what’s going on in their classes. We began by dispelling the myth that data needs to be complex, while driving home the point that the assessment itself needs to be right for the data to be valid. Sometimes, data can be as simple as the feeling you have for howwell a class has grasped a particular topic. This could come from in-class questioning, mini quizzes, exit tickets – it’s what you do with said data that counts. My attendees came up with examples of how they were already using formative assessment in their classes: • If a class is struggling with a couple of calculations, perform a quick bit of ‘live marking’ using your visualiser and set them a fewmore examples. • If they’ve ‘got’ what you’re teaching but aren’t yet secure, make a note to recap it next lesson and then schedule in a quick quiz next month • If their answers lack detail, teach themhow to mark each other so that they knowwhat examiners will be looking for. This model of implementing actions based on data also applies to summative assessment – and perhaps to whole school, or even whole trust exams. Once the data has been collected and the databases have been populated, (which even at this early stage will already involve considerable effort), what you do next will be crucial. Progress 8 Progress 8 can still seem somewhat mystifying to many teachers working at the coalface, though inmy experience, new teachers are keen to knowmore about it. Put simply, it’s a massive national data collection and analysis process, based on students’ progress – that being a measure of the difference between the grade each individual student receives, and what those students with similar KS2 results received nationally. For example – a student attains a grade 7 in GCSE geography. Their KS2 scores were above average – let’s say 110 – in both English and maths. Around the country, students also scoring 110 at KS2 received, on average, a GCSE grade of 6. This student would have a progress score of +1. This measure might not seem all that obvious at first, but the practice of comparing individual grades to national averages soon becomes second nature. See for yourself – what progress score would a student with that same 110 KS2 score get if they received a grade 5?* The overall progress 8 score assigned to each student is then calculated from an average of – wait for it – 10 progress scores... Graded subjects Hold on, why not 8 progress scores? Well, you have to What’s your data TELLING YOU? FORMATIVE VERSUS SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT The differences between them, and what you can do with the data from each… FORMATIVE Assessment for learning Questioning, exit tickets, quizzes Immediate feedback and reteaching Long or medium term plans amended Collected data used to inform focused learning conversations End of topic tests End of module / term tests End of year or mock exam tests SUMMATIVE Assessment of learning teachwire.net/secondary 28