Feeding the Pig

A few years ago, I started with a lovely Year 11 (mixed attainment) group who had not had the best of journeys through Years 7, 8, 9 and 10.  Through a combination of an inconsistent curriculum model and high staff turnover, their knowledge of English at that stage had more holes than the collated plot lines of the Marvel film canon.  That September I felt overwhelmed with the fact that all they knew for the literature course was 7 out of 15 poems, 2 out of 5 acts of ‘Macbeth’ and the basic plots for ‘A Christmas Carol’ and ‘An Inspector Calls’.  Their knowledge of apostrophes didn’t even bear thinking about.

When I compare our current Year 10 cohort to that group, part of me feels a little reassured.  They might have missed a fair chunk of Year 10, but they had a much better deal from Year 7 until that point and I know that most of them will come to Year 11 with more English-based knowledge than my old group did.  Surely, if I could support that previous class through the exams with success, we can do the same for our current students.

When it comes to how I approached that group, it really comes down to a crude, yet accurate, analogy that I have heard many people use in education: weighing a pig doesn’t make it any fatter, feeding it does.  So I took the decision to not put any numbers in their frequent feedback.  No grades.  No mark scheme criteria.  No levels.  I needed to get them to believe in themselves and know what they needed to do to improve; knowing that there was ‘some understanding of context’ was unlikely to help them with this.

Instead, there were lots of short bursts of practice, with specific steps on how to improve through assessment for learning that led to responsive teaching.  I changed lesson plans frequently, adapting for gaps in knowledge and misconceptions that I’d discovered.  We broke complex tasks down into steps, rehearsing them again and again until they could do it without me prompting.  In essence: assess, teach, repeat.

When I think about how I’m going to teach Year 11 in September, I’m planning on doing the same again (albeit from a slight distance).  Lots of low stakes quizzing to find the gaps in knowledge and retrieving what they know; lots of modelling, explaining and scaffolding to illustrate what they need to know; and monitoring them closely to know where to go next, what to teach next and when I can start to remove scaffolds.

Re-thinking KS3 Assessment

Despite the introduction of ‘life after levels’, KS3 assessment in my department still used similar assessment processes.  These weren’t always workload-friendly and also had problems in the way that they then impacted data entry.  This year, we’ve trialled a new approach

What did KS3 assessment look like before?

Our previous KS3 curriculum model was taught across 4 lessons a week with a 2:2 split across two teachers.  Each teacher taught a different unit, where one focused mostly on reading skills and the other on writing.  This model is one we still hold, as it allows us to exploit some of the benefits of interleaving, as well as being able to accommodate part-time teachers without any awkward splits or ‘passing the baton’ from week to week.

Our assessment of KS3 work at this time, however, was not so effective.  In a model that many English teachers will be familiar with, students completed an assessment piece at the end of each half term (alternating between reading and writing assessments).  These were then assessed using a skills-based criteria that was similar to APP, but used our school’s KS3 grading system of Emerging/Developing/Confident/Excelling.

Evaluating the previous model

The biggest drawback to the previous model by far was the impact on staff workload.  Though staff who had multiple KS3 groups would find their planning load lighter if they had multiple classes on the same topic, come assessment time some staff would have 3 or more sets of books to mark at a similar time, with many staff choosing to take these home over the holidays.

The summative nature of the assessments also meant that it could be difficult to ensure that teachers and students had time to address misconceptions and go over gaps in knowledge, since half of the assessments that took place were positioned at the end of the unit.

It was also clear that the presence of a summative assessment impacted the teaching from some staff.  Though our units were labelled as ‘reading-focused’ or ‘writing-focused’, the intention was always that reading, writing and oracy would be integrated to the teaching across a unit.  However, there were instances where teachers would ‘teach to the test’ to support students’ success in the assessment (which meant that our curriculum became narrowed).

Lastly, we found that the assessment gradings were not always reliable indicators of students’ attainment.  Because of this, we needed to encourage staff to be holistic when entering data for reports (meaning that the grading of the assessments started to become redundant).

This year’s approach

This year, we made the decision to review assessment across KS3, in line with a whole-school review.  Yet continuing with the old model in the meantime did not make sense to me, especially given that it increased workload and didn’t have a noticeable impact on students’ learning.

Our 2:2 split remained, but our medium-term plans are now more granular.  This supports our staff in being more consistent with core knowledge/sequencing, as well as ensuring that reading, writing and oracy are integrated into all units.

In terms of assessment, we have scrapped the summative assessments completely, with staff giving formative feedback on work alongside explicit signposting in the schemes for suggestions of assessment activities and also suggestions of where to integrate follow-up lessons to address misconceptions and model the improvements for a class.

In terms of data entry, we still use the whole-school grading system but it’s all holistic.  To support in the accuracy of these judgements, we have used some department time to standardise using a slimmed-down version of the criteria while we evaluate how we assess and record attainment at KS3.  The fact that the schemes now signpost suggestions of assessment activities has also helped with this, as we can compare pieces across classes within the standardisation process.

Next steps

As we review our whole-school assessment for KS3, I expect that there will be changes that we make to refine our process further.  That being said, it makes me glad to see that what was a temporary measure to support workload has actually started us on the way to more effective assessment for learning for our students.