Public Critique. During our monthly TLCs at Temple Moor we have recently been focussing on student ownership of learning – alongside this the Learning Team have been working hard on designing and implementing a creative, realistic and purposeful assessment policy for the whole school and faculties.
For me the term assessment or marking can lead to a confused message – we need to focus on feedback, specifically the quality of feedback given either by teachers or by students to each other. Peer assessment is obviously an important part of feedback and as Black and William (2009) stated one of the five major strategies for effective assessment for learning is “activating students as the owners of their own learning”.
But how many times in a lesson during a self assessment activity is the feedback written or articulated by the students ineffective? …the usual comment – does the missing “it” also show that students don’t put a great deal of time and effort into their comments for each other? Making Feedback Count: “Close the Gap” Recently I have been looking again at the issue of marking.
It is a hugely important source of feedback provided that we keep the volume of marking in proportion to the level of impact it can have in improving learning outcomes. I’ve discussed this in a much-read earlier post: Marking in Perspective: Selective, Formative, Effective, Reflective. 6_AssessmentFeedback. Assessmentforlearningtoolkikx2.