How do we assess pupils at Valley Gardens Middle School ?
“Assessment” means our collection of information about how your child is doing in school. It is happening all the time and often without your child even knowing that we are assessing them. Essentially we assess the learning of pupils in two ways, which act as two separate layers of assessment. These are as follows
Layer 1: Formative AssessmentÂ
Formative assessment takes place on a day-to-day basis during teaching and learning, allowing teachers and pupils to assess attainment and progress more frequently. The teacher identifies pupils’ strengths and weaknesses, supporting them to respond to their areas for development, and adapting their teaching to help pupils improve. Formative assessment is what we want teachers to focus on the most. This is because research evidence tells us that this has the greatest impact on learning. Some examples of formative assessment are:
- Quizzes
- Multi-choice questions
- Retrieval activities
- Reading or observing pupil work (either during or after a lesson)
- Live marking (marking pupils’ work as they are completing it)
- Breaking a complex task down into several smaller parts and assessing one part at a time
- Spelling and vocabulary tests
- Filling in blank knowledge organisers
- Questioning
Layer 2: Summative
Summative assessment is sometimes called assessment of learning and is a formal method to evaluate achievement and learning against key skills/knowledge and expected standards over a period of time. The period of time may vary, depending on what the teacher wants to find out. There may be an assessment at the end of a topic, at the end of a term or half-term, at the end of a year or, as in the case of the national curriculum tests, at the end of a Key Stage. Assessments can take the form of an end of unit test, formal exam, practical performance or project work. We use summative assessment to confirm that our formative assessment is accurate.
Grading pupils’ work
At Valley we use a simple 3 point scale when making judgements about pupils’ performance against the objectives they are being taught; these are Developing, Secure and Greater Depth.
Developing means that the pupil has not yet reached the standard that is required to be secure.
Secure is the standard that we expect for pupils at our school for the year group that they are in.
Greater Depth is used when pupils are working beyond what we would expect for pupils in our school for the year group that they are in.
FeedbackÂ
The Education Endowment Fund’s research on what makes the biggest impact on learning states that high quality feedback is the most effective practice that schools can adopt. Because of this, our teachers use as much time during lessons to live mark and feedback to pupils as they can. Teachers and pupils are used to referring to our 3 point assessment system and discussing what a child needs to do to reach his/her next level in their work. Pupils adapt their work, using a red pen, after teacher feedback to make the necessary adjustments to their work and hopefully achieve the level they are targeted to achieve. The language of Developing, Secure and Greater Depth is common across all curriculum areas and teachers and pupils are very clear about what these mean.
