Whole School CPD - Week 3 - It's not impossible, we can use formative assessment to close the gaps!!

"Practice in a classroom is formative to the extent that evidence about student achievement is elicited, interpreted, and used by teachers, learners, or their peers, to make decisions about the next steps in instruction that are likely to be better, or better founded, than the decisions they would have taken in the absence of the evidence that was elicited. (Black & Wiliam, 2009, p. 9)"

First and foremost, a huge thank you to all colleagues who took the time to read, reflect and respond to our first whole staff CPD post last week. There were so many kind, constructive and insightful comments that I hope you find have been responded to throughout the themes of this weeks post. 

In the spirit of honesty, we are not able to provide concrete answers to some of the longer term queries on assessment policy, use of Try Now tasks and data collection as (and I am sure you will all understand) we are having to adapt as we go to some extent and our priority this term is to ensure we are all equipped with a plethora of formative assessment tools that allow us to quickly identify each students gaps in learning and knowledge in Term 1 of the next academic year. Please see Sarah's voiceover and PowerPoint for more direct clarification over KS3 Assessment.

I hope I am not alone in thinking that the return of all students to our classrooms is a daunting one. Whilst I feel equipped to rise to the challenge, I have one nagging conundrum - how do I teach a room full of students where some will have completed all home learning (plus their own mini bootcamp of extension work), whilst others will have done the bare minimum, if anything at all? Now, whilst we are all used to scaffolding, differentiation, mixed ability teaching, its never been to this extent surely? Do we pitch up/high and hope we can drag the others along with us? Do we aim low and assume they all know nothing? Or do we attempt to spend a small period of time reviewing, retrieving and consolidating, making links between the home learning we set and new knowledge so (if possible) we challenge and engage all students irrespective of how much they completed at home? For me, it has to be the last one but how can this be done?

These are my initial thoughts on how we can formatively assess in the first few weeks to gain knowledge of the gaps. These can work alongside the ten strategies outlined last week.

1. Think back, plan forward.
The first suggestion is to adapt the way low stakes quizzes are created in the first term. Usually we choose questions from previous topics that have little or no relation to the lesson we are about to teach. This is because we are taught that we must retrieve past learning to ensure students can commit it to long-term memory. Let's try this instead - pick questions from home learning topics that help pupils to recall the information they will be applying in this lesson. For example, before teaching a lesson on the impacts of Deforestation, I might pick questions that link to the nutrient cycle, the water cycle and human led development of the rainforest. This will help the pupils to see how this lesson connects to what they have learned at home and still take advantage of the lesson time to learn new knowledge.

2. Analysis Grids.

Show pupils an image of something that relates to a home learning topic. Give them some prompt questions to consider that rely on them thinking back to what they were set at home. These could include open-ended questions such as "When would this diagram/graph/photo etc have been used? Before or after X?" In what scenario might you have seen...' , How can we increase the accuracy of this source'? These more open-ended questions require pupils to recall and use a wider range of their accrued knowledge and understanding. 

3. Just a minute.

Thank you to twitter for this one! Based on the long-running BBC Radio 4 game. Ask pupils to speak for one minute on a home learning topic without hesitation, repetition or deviation. This is also a useful opportunity for formative assessment. As pupils are engaged in this task, circulate the room and observe what they are able to recall and listen out for any misconceptions that are being shared. These can then be addressed while they are still fresh in people’s minds.

4.Connect Four or Concept Maps.

Give pupils four seemingly disparate topics or alternatively a bank of key words from their home learning. Ask them to find as many links between them as they can. Again, the aim is have them think hard about what they know about these topics to find the links. It also has the advantage of helping them to think like an 'expert' in your subject and to develop the complex web of links that disciplines depend upon (see the History example opposite). To extend the challenge, some must articulate the reasoning for their connections along the arrows. 

5. 3-Way Summaries.
The idea here is to use different modes of thinking and attention to detail. Students can work in groups or individually. In response to a question or key piece of knowledge you set out in the home learning, they write three different summaries; 10–15 words long ; 30–50 words long and 75–100 words long. You can even have students use twitter for the shortest version as a way to formulate their first thought. They'll have experience communicating messages with minimal wording and characters!! Ask them - what is the most important fact/skill you learned and build from there.

6. Kagan Structures. As outlined in Hetty's January INSET session, Kagan Cooperative Learning structures allow for multiple formative assessment opportunities. Please see the link attached for our previous blog post on five of the key structures: https://mangotsfieldmoments.blogspot.com/2018/11/kagan-structures-active-engagement.html). 

So how will these strategies help to close the gaps? How can we design curriculums that allow us to recognise the varying levels our students will be at whilst moving them forward at the same time. Dylan Wiliam in his 2011 publication 'Embedding Formative Assessment' outlines five strategies:

1. Clarifying, understanding, and sharing learning intentions - at Mangotsfield this means we ensure every lesson has a driving question and provide time to reflect and respond to this.

2. Engineering effective classroom discussions, tasks and activities that elicit evidence of learning - for us this means use Kagan structures, cold call questioning and exit cards activities to get our students talking about their learning again.

3. Providing feedback that moves learners forward - We wish to utilise the wonder that is GoogleClassrooms to collate examples of students work, annotated with feedback and use to structure whole class feedback.

4. Activating students as learning resources for one another  - grow our community so that students are prompted to discuss their learning, whether again through virtual classroom discussion boards or when we physically have them in front of us. For me this is the I do, We do, You do.

5. Activating students as owners of their own learning - engage and motivate, or as we at Mangotsfield believe in a 'love of learning where students are challenged to do their best'. In a practical sense this is the use of knowledge organisers and retrieval grids so students are able to recognise their own learning gaps.

Further reading should you wish:

1. Retrieval practice was mentioned by some in the feedback form. Whilst it has long been a discussion point for this blog, on reflection it has been discussed in over ten blog posts so far, it is 12 times that the average person must retrieve something from their short term memory to encode it to their long-term. For those of you who wished to learn more can I recommend this video link Rosenshine's Principles - Retrieval Practice.

2. For those considering how we re-establish routines with students, I found this a very reassuring read this week: https://teacherhead.com/2020/05/29/re-establishing-teaching-routines/