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.

Why MATs don’t have to be a bad thing

When I started teaching, I applied for a position at an academy.  After looking around and talking to some of the staff and students, I was won over and, when I started there as an NQT, I had no regrets.  However, it’s disconcerting to think back to all of the warnings I was given by colleagues in my placement schools, on twitter and in my social groups.  Even more worrying was the reaction I got from teachers at teachmeets in the area, where I felt I had to defend my choice of school.  At this point, it was clear that there was a lack of trust towards academies and I feel that this is now extended to multi-academy trusts (MATs).

Partially, this could be due to a fear of the unknown, since colleagues who have been working outside of MATs might be unaware of what working in a MAT is like.  However, when you think about the stereotype of a MAT that’s common amongst teachers, it’s easy to see that there are monsters in the deep (whether they be the dubious dealings of leaders on luxurious salaries, or the perception of a corporate approach where schools become little more than clones).  Yet, there is a lack of coverage of how a MAT might have benefit for students or staff, thus impacting the views of the few teachers who might have been interested.

These ideas about MATs are also reflected in social media.  Recently, I polled 1,228 tweeting teachers on their opinion of working for a MAT and 51% of them  said that they’d feel unhappy with it, with 39% seeing it as a positive thing and 10% having a more nuanced view.  The comments that followed this up suggested that views were based largely on personal experience, with a dislike for ‘chains’ that constrict teacher autonomy and an emphasis on the the idea that it’s leadership that matters.  In this sense, a MAT school is no different from any other school: strong, consistent leaders who put their students and staff first create an environment that teachers enjoy being a part of.  One teacher (Kate, who tweets at @AlwaysBeMarking) even highlighted how different large MATs can be, as she’d had experience with both a ‘living nightmare’ of a place to work versus the ‘supportive partner’ she works with now.  

I worked in a academy that started to support other schools in difficult circumstances, as well as starting its own primary to cater for a boost in new housing.  From this, a small MAT grew where schools kept their own identities but worked together to do the right thing by their students and staff.  Since then, I’ve moved to another school in the MAT and the trust has evolved to become a more collaborative group.

Staff benefit hugely from being part of this MAT: as a new Director of English, I had support from the trust leadership team for two days a week.  This meant that I had an opportunity to develop as a leader, rather than drown in an endless list of jobs to do.  Similarly, staff are also able to complete various qualifications through opportunities created by being part of the trust.  However, it isn’t just about developing staff who are hoping to lead.  Being part of the trust means that it’s easy to collaborate, as we can share resources and come together for external training/speakers at cross-trust meetings or training days.  It’s also a great way for staff to see excellent practice in other schools; this has been particularly useful for the media staff I line-manage, who have benefitted from peer observations across two schools instead of just one.

Students are also able to enjoy the benefits of the above, as well as making the most of additional subject expertise across several schools- a priority when the teacher recruitment crisis looks set to get worse.  In English, it’s meant that I’ve been able to utilise specialists to deliver targeted interventions.  In Science, A Level students have been able to access experts for the topics they study. 

However, the really amazing thing about the MAT I work in with is its focus on doing the right thing by staff and students.  This even boils down to the CEO working closely with the unions when developing our workload charter.  Overall, this means that the well-being of staff is valued, and the impact it has on students is acknowledged.

I realise that my experience with a MAT isn’t comparable to other trusts, not by far.  But I also know that it isn’t the only trust effectively capitalising on the MAT model to best support staff and students.  The stereotype of a ‘typical MAT school’ needs to be challenged; nobody should be made to feel they need to defend working in one.  Instead, we should be allowed to feel proud.

The Importance of Subject-Specific CPD

Imagine walking into a hall of around 100 students, with some who have just started school and others who are near the end of their academic journey.  Perhaps you plan to read out the content of a PowerPoint.  Or maybe you will engage them all with a game of table tennis with students?

Either way, how confident are you that you would be able to deliver a lesson that would effectively meet the learning needs of such a wide range of ages and abilities?  I certainly wouldn’t be, and the same would go for delivering a whole-staff training session that would effectively meet the needs of staff who are at different points in their career and approach their teaching in different ways.

This is one reason why I feel CPD on a whole-school level is problematic.  Every single teacher should be able to leave one of these sessions feeling that they have had time to think and reflect in order to improve the learning of their students.  Instead, many leave with a list of strategies that they’ve already tried (and perhaps didn’t work) or aren’t relevant to their classroom.

It is sensible that schools are leaving behind the ‘whole-school CPD’ model, in favour of subject-specific development.  This is vital as the time spent working on specific subjects allows teachers to develop their subject knowledge, support their workload through team-planning and focus on pedagogy/research that is specific to their discipline.  Furthermore, the fact that the training is led by a head of department means that they know their teams and can plan sessions to support the needs of each member of staff in their department.

This being said, it is crucial to train middle leaders if this is to be effective, or we run the risk of department meetings that consist of a list of notices rather than time to enhance the development of our staff.  CPD time should be primarily based in departments, with middle leaders trained in the best ways to train and develop staff.  Part of this also means planning out the focus for a department; we often consider the sequencing and revisiting of knowledge for our students, but the same is true for

our staff.  Activities could involve engaging with research and considering the impact on teaching, reflecting on recent peer observations, reading around a specific text/area of study to develop subject knowledge or even time to read books on teaching and learning.  You could even use videos of teachers in your department to discuss together what effective teaching is for you.

Overall, the main things that could improve CPD for teachers? Smaller class sizes.

Thanks to @teacherthunks , @trudygroskop , @meshishk and @bossymisst for the feedback on twitter!

My Visualiser: Small Camera, Big Impact

When I started to use a visualiser, I was surprised by some of the feedback from students where they saw it as a helpful tool.  One was the fact that I was no longer ‘in the way’ when modelling on the board (it probably doesn’t help that I’m not always great at standing still during delivery); the second was that students felt that my explanations were clearer, as I took more time.

It is true that sitting to model and write does make me slow down a little, mostly as it has made me more aware of how I am delivering the explanations whilst I model.  The summary of effective direct instruction from Barack Rosenshine (2012) was really influential here, as it made it reconsider the importance of making modelling matter.

To start with, this was as simple as me narrating my thought process (taking the effort to slow down and pause as appropriate) and annotating this thought process as I go.  This meant that students had the scaffold of this thought process when they either continued the piece I started or started anew with a different focus.  This was a big shift from the rushed models I’d previously completed on the whiteboard, as being conscious of the limited space meant that I was often restricted to a single paragraph, with limited annotations.

Over time, I also started to replace more of my pre-prepared models with a live version, using the visualiser.  For example, when feeding back after looking at students’ work, I now tend to write model to show students how to get past the misconceptions I identified by modelling those mistakes and the correcting of them.  Again, modelling the thought process has been important here as I’ve had students reflect by asking which questions I asked myself whilst writing that they didn’t ask themselves, before they redraft their original piece.  What I’m aiming to develop is the idea that they shouldn’t ‘just write’ (as is the temptation in exams where time is limited and the required knowledge is substantial); instead, I want to embed the process of ‘write > reflect > repeat’.

As well as modelling the process for written answers (which has proved more successful than the various acronyms I’ve used for analytical paragraphs before), I’ve also used the visualiser to model planning of tasks/writing and the annotation of texts.  I believe that this has supported students’ cognitive load because (as one student mentioned) I’m not ‘getting in the way’ of the explanation/modelling.  Students can look and the board and listen to my narration; they don’t need to be distracted by my physical presence.

Now I am more confident with using the visualiser, I now find that I use it without planning to, which has made it particularly useful when it comes to addressing misconceptions or sharing successes ‘in the moment’ as well as live marking a piece to model effective peer/self assessment.

Faster Reading: A Trial Run

Previously, my approach to a text read in lessons has been to interleave the reading of a text with analytical lessons focused on developing reading skills.  The aim of this would be that students practised their analysis writing skills as we explored a text.  However, I found that I have been more and more worried with the lack of retention when it came to the overall plot and key events (despite regular quizzing).

This led me to the concept of ‘Faster Reading’, where students read two novels back-to-back (focusing on plot rather than detailed analysis) before going back to analyse key extracts once they have a clear understanding of the plot as a whole.  The idea is that it allows students to focus on knowing the plot well rather than the ‘read a section, analyse a section’ approach that I had used previously.

With so much focus on remembering a plot for the GCSE Literature exams, I was keen to trial some of the principles with my Year 10 class this term (reading ‘A Christmas Carol’) and I have been surprised so far with the positive impact it’s had on their retention of key events.

The Process

Teaching a mixed attainment group, I was keen to ensure that students were still able to access higher levels of thinking whilst we read, so I chose to get students to make notes as we read (training them in the Cornell method as we did so).  For this, students had differentiated questions to address in their notes, focusing on comprehension questions at the lower end and a sustained focus on considering Dickens’ polemic message for top-end students.

I was also careful not to overload students with too much time spent reading, so most lessons followed the structure below, with about 20 minutes of each lesson spent reading the text.

Typical structure:

1. Retrieval task through five questions on previous events (focusing on events that were significant to the events of that lesson’s chapter).
2. Reading of the text, with breaks to add to notes (using the Cornell method) and to discuss some key moments/vocabulary in the text through whole-class discussion.
3. Task to reflect on aspects of a key character or theme from that day’s reading- this could be as simple as sketching a character and labelling with adjectives to describe them, or writing a comparison to how they were presented earlier in the text.
4. Students write (in their Cornell grid) a short summary of the events from the section we read that day.

In terms of time, this meant that the reading of the novella was condensed considerably, spread over 16 lessons instead of 35.  The remaining lessons, then, involve going back over key extracts and conducting a detailed analysis, including links to other events across the whole text.

My Findings

As we read the text, I was pleasantly surprised when students were able to make links to previous events- sometimes coming up with ideas that I had not considered myself.  This, perhaps, could be a result of reading the text in a shorter period of time: the previous chapters were fresher in their minds and, therefore, allowed them to access this information more readily.

I have also found that, in the subsequent analysis lessons, students were being more creative with their interpretations and have been much more confident with the analysis of Dickens’ methods as they can draw on other areas of the text to further support ideas.

However, the result I am most impressed with is my students’ ability to recall quotations and events with ease and confidence in discussion tasks.  This was particularly evident in a recent lesson where they were used for an interview lesson.  Here it was intriguing to see what they were able to recall without my direction or scaffolding- again reinforcing how confident they feel compared to previous tasks.

It is important to note that my approach could not be considered rigorous, as there are a number of other variables that could have generated my findings, including a different mix of students and also the introduction of Cornell notes and training in self-testing for students to complete at home.  That being said, I am looking forward to coming back to the text in Year 11 to see if the students recall more a year later in comparison to previous year groups.

Diversity: Check

It’s been a hectic year in many respects for me: moving to lead a department in a new school and moving to a different (and very picturesque) area of Yorkshire has meant that blogging has taken a bit of a back seat.  However, being sat here facing the remaining six hours of a sweaty train ride home after #TENC18 leaves me wondering about the curriculum I put in place in September.

Before I starting leading my current  department in September, I already had some clear ideas in mind about the texts taught at KS3, as it needed some clear updating.  After consulting my new team, we decided on Prince of Mist for Y8 and Trash for Y7.  Both texts aren’t set in England, both texts offer a multitude of opportunities to engage students in both reading and writing.  Yet something still hasn’t sat quite right and a recent discussion with other subjects leaders near me made me realise: my department’s curriculum lacks diversity, someone that is vital in the ‘hidden curriculum’ (a term borrowed from Hywel Roberts) when our intake reflects where we live: predominantly white and middle-class.  This was highlighted in a recent A Level Literature lesson on post-colonial theory when my students struggled to name writers who weren’t white and - in most cases - dead.

With this in mind, I was delighted to see that @benniekara was leading a session on diversity in the curriculum at #TENC18. I went in, hoping to walk away with a reading list of BAME writers so that I could tick the box of diversity and feel like I was giving students a more balanced diet.  How wrong I was.

Here are my main findings from @benniekara ‘s session:

• Diversity isn’t about ticking boxes; it’s about the links between the boxes and how they reflect society
• Diversity isn’t about a checklist BAME writers; it’s about all of the different ‘labels’ we use in society and understanding how representation of different groups has developed over time
• Diversity isn’t about re-writing the curriculum; it’s about using the curriculum to introduce a wider understanding through set texts, but also extracts (fiction and non-fiction) to develop a critical understanding of the questions surrounding race, gender, sexuality, disability, religion and social class

So, although I will be looking at ways to introduce a broader diet of writers to my students, I’m also going to think about how I can teach students about the development of literature from different angles- especially at KS4.  Planning a new scheme of diverse extracts for Year 10 Language seems like the perfect opportunity for this.

Which film will we be watching, Sir?

It's here again: the portion of the year reserved for the age-old debate of whether to watch a DVD in the final week of term. Not so long ago, as a student, I can easily imagine how my teachers would have fought it out to book the hallowed TV trolley to stick on a film at the end of the year to get an hour of peace and quiet while their class caught up on sleep in front of whatever classic the teacher had available. I have a clear memory of this in my Year 9 Physics lesson, watching the first hour of Shrek and wondering why we had to waste time watching a film that bored me even more than the usual drivel (apologies to all Physics teachers- my Year 9 self had yet to realise that it wasn't the subject that was issue, but a teacher whose dulcet tones often had the most enthusiastic of us with heads on our desks within the first five minutes).

Now we are in the bright age of computers with DVD drives and (if you choose to risk it) streaming, film ‘lessons’ are readily available to all.

Please don't mistake these opening comments for a condemnation of film/TV in the classroom: they aren't. There are a plethora of times when showing students films or clips can be vital to their learning. For example: I rarely teach a Shakespeare text without using a Globe version to help students analyse dramatic method and consider how they can stage their own adaptations. However, putting students to sleep in a dark room in front of the latest age-appropriate blockbuster is not the way to engage them in the countdown to the holidays.

Instead, for my last week of lessons, I'm going to get them to apply what they've learnt to new contexts and also to consolidate some knowledge before the inevitable forgetting period that occurs when they jet off to Lanzarote, New York or Bognor Regis.

Year 7 are going to be debating to what extent it’s morally acceptable to use war to create entertainment by comparing their study of Sherriff’s presentation of the trenches with the presentation of the same conditions in some short clips from ‘Blackadder Goes Forth’.

Year 8 have been looking at how poets use their medium to reflect on culture and heritage. So, inspired by a colleague, they’ll be using the poems we’ve explored to create a poetry mash-up to consider how poetry can also be used to reflect the multi-cultural society we live in.

Year 9 will be taking their knowledge of how writers use language and structure to impact an audience outside of conventional literature texts to see how and why song-writers apply the same techniques.

Year 10 are going to be consolidating their extended knowledge of ‘Romeo and Juliet’ by creating their own knowledge organisers to collate the gems of learning from our study of Petrarchan lovers, tragic concepts and alternative readings of the text.

My question to you is: how will your classes be making the most of their final moments before the summer? Tweet with #nofilmlessonshere to share and collaborate!