The secondary curriculum review
Assessment is, whether explicitly or implicitly, an integral part of all effective teaching and learning. In many classroom activities, teachers notice when learners have grasped a concept, improved their skills or made links with previous learning. This may be evident through what the learner says or does or through the work they produce. Learners may also be conscious of their own progress, particularly when the learning objectives of the lesson have been made clear and success criteria have been made explicit, although this awareness can be strongly reinforced by a positive remark or a constructive comment. This affirmation will often be from a teacher or another adult but can be equally powerful from a peer if opportunities are given for appropriate discussion in the light of the objectives of the lesson and agreed success criteria.
In most cases, this kind of day-to-day assessment will relate to specific aspects of the subject and to the current teaching focus. In their planning, teachers can anticipate where there will be particularly useful opportunities to assess the understanding of the whole group or of individuals. These can be built into whole-class teaching sessions and plenaries or into group or individual discussions where questioning can reveal learners' insights and misconceptions. The observations made by teachers in these everyday situations, whether recorded or simply retained in the memory, will help them to shape how future teaching and learning is planned and organised, and to adopt a more personalised approach to learning. This can occur in a variety of ways:
Occasionally, however, learners will also demonstrate progress in their skills and understanding when this was not necessarily expected. For example, pupils who are normally not confident writers may produce a significantly better piece of report-writing or explanation when they are dealing with content from another area of the curriculum where they have a particular interest and expertise. Pupils who have learnt about coordinates in mathematics might have their understanding significantly consolidated and improved by having to apply their learning when map-reading on a field trip. This kind of evidence is particularly powerful in confirming that learners can apply their skills and understanding independently and in more authentic contexts.
Effective day-to-day assessment:
