What do you think of it so far ?Creative Geography Assessments

Alan ParkinsonSecondary Curriculum Development Leader

Geographical Association

Rubbish ! ??

GA Book“Assessing progress in your KS3

geography curriculum”

£9.99GA

Members

“The quality of assessment in primary and secondary schools is

generally weak. Assessment focuses insufficiently on giving constructive

feedback to pupils about their geographical knowledge, skills and

understanding.”

OFSTED, 2008

“The quality of assessment in primary and secondary schools is generally

weak. Assessment focuses insufficiently on giving constructive feedback to

pupils about their geographical knowledge, skills and understanding.”

OFSTED, 2008

Tim Brighouse“He tells you what you did wrong and explains

how you can get it right.”

“When you’ve handed in your work, she does the same, but if you only do as she has suggested you won’t get top marks. You have to think for

yourself about how to improve it...”

“It’s got to the point where I can tell how I can improve... Mr. B calls it metacognition...”

Smart assessment...Reducing marking

Growing naturally from tasks & feeding back into next stage of sequence ?

Student requests ?

Continuous / terminal / peer / periodic / transitional / formative / summative ?

Why assess ?What are we assessing ?

Are we assessing geography or are we assessing students ?

What specific knowledge, skills and understanding do we need, or

want, to assess ?Consider your own contexts...

Kenny O’ DonnellAsked Year 7 students

http://geodonn.blogspot.com

When I suggested that sometimes constructive criticism of a piece of

work from a peer would be something more easily accepted, only one student agreed and the

rest had no faith in themselves to be a critical friend for others. 73% of my s1 felt that observations by a teacher were the most important feedback that they would receive.

uMapper wiki mapsAdding details of a hurricane to an

interactive map...

Exam question...You will have 1 minute to answer

the following question...

What were the key messages that you got from Alan Kinder this

morning ?

Assessment- not just about the task...

What do you do with your assessment results ?

Diagram Fig. 4 from Weeden

“Although many geography departments now have relevant data, they are used too

rarely to plan schemes of work or sequences of lessons..”

OFSTED 2008

“travelling with a different view”

Good AfL could be shown by:1. Sharing lesson objectives and outcomes with students and

e.g. sharing success criteria with students, clarifying the knowledge, skills and understanding to be learnt etc)

2. Helping students to know and recognise the standard they are aiming for (e.g. by periodically informing students of the levels they are working at, providing examples of good work,

modelling how a task should be completed etc)3. Providing effective feedback (e.g, by referring back to

learning objectives and success criteria, providing oral feedback while students are on task, emphasising success, setting next steps, explaining how to achieve next steps)

4. Involving students in peer and self assessment (e.g. developing opportunities for students to assess themselves

and each other against the learning objectives or success criteria, using strategies such as traffic lighting etc)

5. Promoting confidence that all students can improve (e.g. by using assessment to build self-esteem, developing

learning partnerships between students and teachers etc)6. Reflecting on learning (e.g. by providing students with time to act on feedback given, involving students in the

process of reflecting on assessment information and targets, providing opportunities for a draft-mark-reflect-improve

cycle etc)With thanks to Christine Lloyd Staples for these 2 slides

Example marking grids...Student-friendly level descriptors...

You can’t level a piece of work...Footsteps sheet in Toolkit book

Of or ForTests Feedback

Looking back Looking forward

Proving Improving

Summative Formative

Peer AssessmentTraining needed...

Students need to know what they are looking for, and how they know that they have seen it...

Opportunities for assessmentORAL EVIDENCE

QuestioningListening

DiscussionPresentations

InterviewsDebates

Audio recordingVideo recording

Role play

WRITTEN EVIDENCEQuestionnaires

DiariesReportsEssaysNotesStories

Newspaper articlesScriptsPoems

Descriptions

GRAPHIC EVIDENCEDiagrams

Sketches and drawingsGraphs

Overlays

PRODUCTSModelsGames

Photographs‘Presentations’...

Learning Event GeneratorDeveloped by John Davitt

The Learning Event GeneratorGEOGRAPHY VERSION

Can be edited for your own context

Excel macro

The “Dos” and the “As”You decide what they are....

Next steps...Think of a forthcoming

assessment that you have to do...How might you change it in the

light of what you’ve heard today ?

http://slideshare.net/geoblogs

Climate for LearningWhat’s it like in your classroom ?

or