Assessment for Learning:
Encouraging progress
through self-reflection and
self-evaluation in high
ability students:
* Evaluative starters and
plenaries
* Effective peer
assessment
* Encouraging
independent progress
through effective teacher
feedback
QUEEN ELIZABETH’S SCHOOL
Rank the following statements in order of importance.
Discuss in pairs and prepare to justify your reasons:
(1 being highest 5 being lowest)
Why are starters an important part of planning a lesson?
Starter activities that demand active engagement and high-level thinking
provide pupils with a mental ‘warm-up’ for the lesson.
They can enable pupils to connect with prior learning, either to build on
what has been learned in previous lessons or to assimilate a new topic or
idea.
They can enable you to find out what pupils already know and understand.
Starters exploit the prime learning time at the beginning of lessons when
pupils are often at their most receptive and concentration levels are high.
They create a sense of pace from the beginning of the lesson.
QUEEN ELIZABETH’S SCHOOL
Starters to help promote high-order thinking
QUEEN ELIZABETH’S SCHOOL
Rank the following statements in order of importance.
Discuss in pairs and prepare to justify your reasons to the class:
(1 being highest 5 being lowest)
Why does Lord Capulet feel so strongly about his daughter’s
marriage to Paris?
He wants to see his daughter married and settled to a man he
approves of
He wants to be proud of her
He wants to have control over who she does or does not marry
He wants his daughter to marry a man he chooses: rich, generous,
powerful, respected and has status
Wedding celebration was intended to raise spirits after the death
of Tybalt – Capulet thought it was the right time .
Exploring how Priestley undermines the character of
Mr Birling
Task: Put the following statements in order of importance. Select strong evidence
from the play to justify your views. (1 = highest importance, 5 = lowest).
Why is the engagement between Sheila and Gerald so important to Mr Birling?
•
Gerald is the type of man that Mr Birling approves of to marry his daughter.
•
Mr Birling cares about his daughter’s happiness and he believes that Gerald will
make Sheila happy.
•
The marriage will benefit Mr Birling’s business through uniting Crofts Limited with
Birling and Company.
•
The marriage will boost the social status of the Birlings.
•
Gerald will be an excellent son-in-law for Mr Birling to bond with.
How can you become a water warrior?
Collect rainwater for
watering the garden
Only use the
washing machine
with a full load
Saves most
water
Take showers
rather than baths
Make sure dripping
taps are turned off
Don’t leave the tap on
when brushing your
teeth
Only use the washing machine
with a full load
Complete the diamond nine
showing the ways you think are
best to help save water. Use the
ideas to help you, but you can
add your own ideas too!
Install your toilet
with a dual flush
Saves least
water
Wash up saucepans by
hand rather than use the
dishwasher
Only boil as much water
in the kettle as you need
Using the starter to establish a calm learning environment
QUEEN ELIZABETH’S SCHOOL
Establishing a calm learning
environment
Think about:
• Where should boys be looking? At you/the
board/at a sheet?
• Do you need a written resource? What will it
achieve?
• Keep instructions short and simple, preferably
written down, not just spoken, for clarity.
Establishing a calm learning
environment
1. Respond to a sound clip/video (whiteboards)
2. Respond to an image (whiteboards)
3. Quick quiz/check knowledge from homework
Queen Elizabeth’s School
Music Department
Starter activity
You will hear 3 clips of music. Each clip
describes a mood or emotion.
On your mini-whiteboard, state the
MOOD or EMOTION
described by each piece of music, and one
MUSICAL reason for your answer.
Mood/Emotion
Reason(s)
Mood/Emotion
Reason(s)
EXAMPLE:
Happy
Major key,
allegro
staccato
Establishing a calm learning
environment
1. Respond to a sound clip/video (whiteboards)
2. Respond to an image (whiteboards)
3. Quick quiz/check knowledge from homework
What links these images?
Minimalism: a twentieth-century
movement in music, art and design.
Establishing a calm learning
environment
1. Respond to a sound clip/video (whiteboards)
2. Respond to an image (whiteboards)
3. Quick quiz/check knowledge from homework
TRUE OR FALSE: ii
1
Minimalism is a
style of music which
was in favour in the
1970s.
Minimalism is a
style of music which
was in favour in the
1960s.
1
Minimalism is a
style of music which
was in favour in the
1970s.
Minimalism is a
style of music which
was in favour in the
1960s.
Using the starter to motivate learners and stimulate their
interest in the lesson
QUEEN ELIZABETH’S SCHOOL
First finisher gets a merit
(include a 5 minute countdown clock)
Discussion Starters
(snowballing)
What’s Love Got To Do With It?
Daisy’s reasons to love Gatsby other than passion
Gatsby’s reasons to love Daisy other than passion
Reasons why Gatsby and Daisy are
driven by pure passion
Learning Objective (AO3 and AO4) To understand the influence of
social, psychological and historical context from a critical perspective
Starter Challenge! What’s in the box?
This half term we will be
learning about population –
but what country will be our
focus?
Write down 3 geographical
questions you could ask to
discover which country is
hidden behind the box
The teacher will chose and
answer 9 questions and reveal
a piece of the box
Is this country in the
northern or southern
hemisphere?
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
MERITS: Good questions or correct identification of
the country
SAS
Read these lines from a poem:
Seven of them pinned in blood by
long shiny tails, three of them still
alive and writhing against the wood,
their heaviness whipping the wall
as they try to break free
Task: Work out what 'seven of them'
are. Use specific words to help you.
SAS
The title of the poem is:
Rattlesnakes Hammered on the Wall
How do you think the rattlesnakes came to be
hammered on the wall?
How does the narrator seem to feel about it?
(Not how you feel).
How might the poem continue?
WORLD RIVERS: Week 2: The upper course
Bell Time: What
features of a river’s
upper course make it
a great place to do
outdoor pursuits?!
Starter Challenge!
Image a place…!
As a part of the Chinese New Year celebrations, the
Chinese Embassy in London is running a competition to
create an IMAGE OF CHINA. If you needed to draw one
picture to represent what you imagine when you think
of China, what would it be?
TASK
You have 5 minutes to draw you geographical image of
China. NOTE: It should be an image of a place or
landscape…
Starter Challenge!
Image a place…!
Class review: How many
different images were
created? Urban / rural? Rich
/poor? Agriculture / Industry?
Now pass you image to the person next to you. Examine
the image in front of you. How does it compare to the
image that you created? Is it similar or different?
TASK
You have 5 minutes to write 3 sentences to describe the
image that your neighbour has drawn.
EXTENSION: Write one similarity and one difference
with the image you created.
Effective Plenaries:
• On your own, write down the three most
important goals to achieve in a plenary
• Swap with your partner and rank which is most
important (1-3, with 1 being most important and
3 being least). Be ready to feed back to the
group and justify why you made these choices
QUEEN ELIZABETH’S SCHOOL
• At its worst, a plenary can come across as an
awkward bolt-on to the lesson: rushed, lost in
packing away and setting homework.
• Plenary can be lost in a quick ‘what did we learn
today?’ and often pupils will say anything to get
out of the room.
• The best plenaries are those that form staging
posts looking both backwards and forwards,
evaluating the learning that’s just taken place
and therefore making suggestions about the
learning that’s coming next
Did we achieve today’s objectives?
Assessment for Learning:
• What are the benefits for peer assessment for
students?
• What problems have you encountered when
planning and delivering peer assessment
activities?
• What strategies have enabled you to deliver
effective peer assessment (and solve some of
the problems identified)?
Peer and self-assessment: encouraging
independence and motivation for A*
• When students assess each other and themselves they encourage a
greater responsibility for learning.
• Engagement with assessment criteria and reflection of their own
performance and that of their peers enables students to learn from
their previous mistakes, identify their strengths and weaknesses
and learn to target their learning.
• Getting students to become more active in their learning in this way
can help to alter the perception of learning as being a passive
process. If students are participants rather than 'spectators', they
are more likely to engage with their learning.
Peer and self-assessment: encouraging
independence and motivation for A*
• Peer and self-assessment also give students a sense of all
the things you have to consider when setting and
marking work, helping them to more effectively
understand assessment criteria.
• Assessment criteria needs to be clearly and fully
described so that students are able to understand exactly
what is expected of them.
• Perhaps stretch students by asking them to contribute to
the assessment criteria, transferring even more
ownership to the students.
Peer assessment:
Feedback is most effective when:
• It is focused on the specific learning goal for the piece of work.
• It identifies mistakes and clearly indicates where corrections are
needed. Impact is greatest when those corrections are completed
by the student and checked by the teacher.
• Students need time to reflect on the feedback and respond to it.
E.g. if mistakes are identified boys could bring them together to
write an overview target. Or, students could state how they are
going to meet the target by setting tasks to be achieved before the
next homework or in a revision checklist before they next have a
test on that topic.
• Teachers monitor the impact of feedback.
Further ideas for effective teacher
feedback:
• Ask pupils to re-write one paragraph in the lesson based on
the teacher’s written feedback following a marked task.
This could be self-assessment to encourage pupils to reflect
on their progress.
• Create a class tally of the most common targets following a
marked piece of work, and discuss/agree steps to address
the target with the class.
• Ask pupils to write their most recent target at the top of
the piece of work that is going to be marked. You could also
ask pupils to suggest how they feel they have improved in
relation to the target, perhaps through a colour coding
system or a brief comment.
Further ideas for effective teacher
feedback:
• At KS4 and KS5, encourage pupils to reflect on how they
have improved in their targets over a period of time,
through looking back over a cluster of essays and
identifying recurring targets or improvement.
• Ask pupils to re-do a piece of work if they have not
addressed previous targets.
• Create a ‘target wall’ on the classroom wall where pupils
can record their targets and progress.
• If there is a common target given out after marking, the
teacher should guide pupils through a collaborative process
of modelling a better answer and then get pupils to
improve a paragraph based on this.