Improving Teaching and learning Through Formative Assessment or

1. Improving Teaching and learning Through Formative Assessmentor Creating a Learning Culture

2. Key Factors • Active involvement of children in their own learning • Improving motivation and self esteem • Provision of effective feedback • Enable pupils to self-assess and understand how to make improvements • Adjust teaching to follow assessment

3. Key Strategies • A growth mindset • Learning Partners • Involving pupils in planning • Learning objectives and success criteria • Cooperative improvement

4. A Growth MindsetIs the brain a bucket that can be filled to capacity or a muscle that can be strengthened by use? A large body of research shows that once a child is placed in an ability group/stream/set, even at the age of 6, be it top set or bottom set, that is where he is likely to be at the end of his school career!

5. Fixed Mindset Fixed ability – “I’m smart or I’m not” Proving Conservative learning Failure and mistakes are bad Effort aversive Ignores information Fragile – easily depressed Shirk, blame or cheat rather than be wrong Comparative and competitive Growth Mindset Expandable ability –” I can get smarter if I try” Improving Adventurous learning Failure and mistakes are useful Effort can be pleasurable Focuses on information Resilient and determined Try, commit, open to rethinking Collaborative and generous What kind of learners do we need?

6. Language is the key Which mindset do these words of praise support? • You must be so clever, you did that so quickly ! • Well done, you are learning to…! • I’m really pleased you tried that! • Well done, you got that all right without even having to think about it! • He got all his spellings right and we didn’t even learn them this week! • You’re so good at drawing you’ll be the next Picasso! • Wow, you’ve made that even better!

7. We have tried: Consciously changing teachers vocabulary • Always ‘learning’ not ‘doing’ or ‘working on’ • Focus not on ‘I can..’ but ‘I am getting better at..’ or ‘I am learning to ..’ • Learning objectives not ‘To be able to..’ but ‘Learning to ..’ both on planning and in the classroom

8. Raising status of learning: • We have only three class rules: ‘Be safe, be kind and learn’ • Children talk now in terms of learning. They ask ‘What are we learning today?’ rather than ‘What are we going to do?’. • Most children understand that disruptive behaviour disturbs learning and talk about other children ‘stopping me learning’ and they are getting better at ignoring such behaviour.

9. No stickers! • No stickers at all in class since September, children have not asked for them • Decision not shared with or explained to the children but accepted completely • Adults make constant effort to praise enthusiasm, attitude and willingness to persevere and improve.

10. Children are encouraged to improve their own work not compare to others – “Give yourself a smile because you’ve made it better” • Merits are awarded only for sticking to the class rules all week, never one off pieces of work or actions. So, this is recognition of consistent effort to learn.

11. Learning Partners Setting Up • Weekly partners change Monday mornings • Totally random draw – no appeals • Odd numbers work as a three • Partners work together every day

12. Promoting success • Agree why we should work together • Agree the behaviour and attitude we need • Use adult models • Praise and explain good examples of skills • Support pairs in difficulty • Gather children’s views

13. Successful partner work explored with class Class were playing phoneme bingo (counting the phonemes in a word). Jo and Jane came up with different answers, five and four respectively. Jo explained why he thought there were five phonemes by sounding out and demonstrating on his fingers. Jane said she thought there were only four, went to show this on her fingers and realised Jo was right. “Oh yes, so it is five!” The pair next to them had just said to each other “It’s five.” “No, it’s not it’s four. “ and didn’t know what to do next. We discussed the need to explain and persuade and listen to what your partner thinks, not just assert that you are right and start arguing.

14. Changing attitudes • Accepting and enjoying change of partners • Choosing to work with partners • Learning to work with anyone • Developing responsibility towards others

15. Children choose to work with learning partners • After building work in the Christmas break, the furniture had been left piled up at one side of the room. On the first day of term, the children were asked to put out the furniture. Without direction from the teacher they arranged each table separately, rather than grouped as they had been before. When asked why they were like that, the children said that it would be easier to work with their partners as they had a table each. • Each day now starts with the tables separated, then pushed together when needed.

16. Becoming responsible for others. • Working on a topic of ‘Castles’, children were constructing model castles from various materials around the classroom in freely chosen groups. One little girl found herself on her own and told the teacher she had noone to build with. Ben, who was busy building with a group of friends on the other side of the classroom, overheard this and immediately got up and came over. “I’ll help her, she’s my learning partner!”

17. Overcoming reluctance to work with opposite sex • Barry, who at first refused to partner Milly because she is a girl, was persuaded and supported to try to work with her. • They have ever since been firm friends and Barry has become one of the most successful learning partners, no matter who he is paired with.

18. Challenges • Difficult pairings need adult support • Dealing with odd numbers and absent partners • Some learning still needs ability grouping

19. Impact • Children developing the ability to work with anyone • Children of all abilities feeling more valued • Children more willing to share their ideas • Children talking about how to improve • Children more aware of the process of learning

20. Children empowered to help A very mixed ability pair, Jed and Oscar were checking each others morning sentence. Oscar (more able?) read his sentence out, but had written ‘fird’ for ‘third’. Jed (less able?) said “That sounds like a ‘th’ so there should be a ‘t’ and a ‘h’.” Then, consolingly, “ But don’t worry, you have got an ‘er’ sound so that bit’s right’. Oscar accepted what Jed said and rewrote the word without complaint. Would a ‘Blue group’ child have felt they could correct work from ‘Red group’ last year? I don’t think so. Nor would they have had the chance.