How can assessment encourage & motivate children to succeed academically & socially? Kei

How can assessment encourage and motivate children to succeed both academically and socially? - Kei

Formative assessments can motivate children to succeed both academically and socially as the evidence of learning can be interpreted by both the child and the teacher to determine the child’s next steps in order for the child to reach closer to their learning goals (Harlen, 2007). For example, in Year 1 English, the ongoing learning objective is to write a sentence using Colourful Semantics. Colourful Semantics is used to teach the syntax of a sentence which includes ‘a who’ (subject), ‘a what doing’ (verb) and ‘a where’ (object). After the children complete their piece of writing on the present progressive tense. The children have access to a help mat with a Remember box that allows the children to independently check their piece of writing. The children are able to edit and improve their writing by checking the success criteria such as: sounding out phonemes, using finger spaces, capital letter and a full stop.

Black and Wiliam states that feedback to any pupil should cater to that individual child, it should offer advice for improvement and avoid comparisons with other children (Black and Wiliam, 1998). Where TN used the Remember Box to check for finger spaces, capital letters and full stops which had done independently. After this, I checked (pink pen) and circled the verb like written as lic and asked him if he remembered the split digraph (i-e) we have been learning this week. He did not remember this but I was able to scaffold the answer to him. TN edited the verb like in his writing (in green pen). I also asked TN, what he was proud of with his writing to which he replied, “I remembered everything in the Remember Box.” As I was offering TN advice on his writing, I noticed that some of the children in my writing group were also eager to receive feedback as well.

Socially, creating an environment where children can assess their work together can also be rewarding for both children involved. An example of this is when I encouraged the children to celebrate RN’s piece of writing which I had projected onto the board. I asked the children, “What can we praise RN for, in her piece of writing?”, to which the children agreed that she successfully used capital letters and finger spaces. Next, we moved on to how we can give advice on improvement. The children discussed with their talk partner and agreed that although RN used a full stop at the end of a sentence, they noticed that the full stop was not touching the line. As a result, the children were able to build a culture in the classroom to give constructive feedback and celebrate each other’s work.

References:

BLACK, P. & WILIAM, D. 1998. Inside the Black Box: Raising Standards Through Classroom Assessment, London, GL Assessment.

Harlen, W. (2007). Assessment of learning. 1st ed. London: Saga Publications.

Abigail Ball : 09 Dec 2019 15:26 |  Tags: Assessment Teaching |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem