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ASSESSMENT FOR LEARNING

Learning Unlimited has now run courses on Assessment for Learning for over four years for teachers of all ages, stages and subjects in Scotland, Guernsey and the United States. On the basis of this work, Ian Smith has produced a series of four practical booklets on Assessment for Learning. During the coming session our emphasis will change to offering courses based on these booklets. They are designed for those who are ready to take an aspect of Assessment for Learning a stage further.

Although this was the first aspect of Assessment for Learning that most schools focused on, many have found it a difficult area to deal with. Teachers have found writing success criteria challenging. Too often sharing learning intentions and success criteria has become a paper exercise with teachers and pupils going through the motions.
The course will help to:

• iron out any problems you and your colleagues have with writing learning intentions, devising success criteria and sharing them with pupils
• produce learning intentions and success criteria for a topic of their choice
• work out how best to use learning intentions and success criteria to achieve national targets and standards

Dylan Wiliam considered questioning to be the most crucial aspect of Assessment for Learning. This course will help participants to ask better questions and ask questions better. It is based on the assumption that if you want to increase the level of challenge in the questions that you ask you need to increase the amount of support you give pupils to answer these questions.
The course will help you to:

• increase the level and quality of thinking and interaction in your classroom by asking better questions and asking questions better
• plan a series of questions for a significant part of a lesson on a topic you are familiar with and for an appropriate age group of students
• use that experience to reflect on what changes you might expect to make to your current practice

‘Thank you for a stimulating and positive day. I have read the staff responses and they are very positive indeed.’

‘Right now I feel more confident about leading the AfL initiative in my school.’

‘What I enjoyed about today was the activities that put feedback into its real meaningful areas.’

‘I want to pass this on to my pupils… I want them to be good at learning, not at French.’

‘I appreciate the thoroughness of the material and the generosity of Learning Unlimited to share their expertise.’

‘Atmosphere created was relaxed and friendly which made learning fun.’

‘Right now I feel energised and inspired and can’t wait to put some of what I’ve learned into practice.’

Pupils need good quality feedback that helps them to learn more and to improve. Yet classrooms where there may be one teacher and thirty pupils are not particularly feedback-rich environments. Teachers need to ensure the feedback that they give, both written and verbal is as effective as it can be. They also need to model giving feedback so that pupils are better able to give each other effective feedback.
This course will help participants to:

• reflect on what verbal feedback they give to pupils and how they can improve it
• make the most of the time they have available for promoting feedback in the classroom
• make written marking manageable and ensure pupils respond to it

This course focuses on exploring the place of promoting assessment by pupils in the process of meaningful, sustainable personal learning planning. It will visit areas of Assessment for Learning which are critical in the process and will draw on examples of good practice in peer and self assessment.
This course will focus on the following areas:

• help pupils to talk about quality products and performances
• help pupils to reflect on learning strategies that work for them use learning logs or journals to help students to reflect on products and processes in a meaningful and manageable way for personal learning planning

‘Brilliant again! Can’t get enough of this – great to get practical, manageable ideas that work in the classroom.’

‘An amazingly valuable experience both personally for my department and for the school as a whole.’

‘Right now I feel inspired to go ahead with many of the ideas from the course.’