Online assessments with EDClass can boost your education
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Assessments with EDClass allow you to develop as you advance through your learning pathway with our bespoke methods.
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Assessment
Why you should choose EDLounge for tracking and safeguarding
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By using EDLounge you have access to a comprehensive school improvement platform and learning environment. But there are two things that above others makes EDLounge stand out: tracking and safeguarding.
Ultimately, our system is designed in order to help you to streamline practices, raise standards and increase whole school outcomes.
EDLounge’s advanced tracking system means pupil performance can be monitored closely to improve student outcomes. But how does it work? And how is tracking balanced with safeguarding to help student’s best interests are achieved?
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Student grades: the challenge of ranking students to predict grades
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Information is emerging about the methodology for awarding student grades for this academic year.
Grades look set to be informed by your current data and an element of student ranking within your subject. Grades will be moderated against prior KS2 data, prior school attainment data and national distribution of grades.
The process brings about many challenges – not least the threat of bias. But what should be taken into account to ensure a fair and justifiable approach.
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Ipsative Feedback and Assessment
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There is such controversy surrounding assessment in the current educational climate that it is hard to see the wood for the trees. Inspectors will expect each student to know their own targets and current levels of progress but many teachers find that this can demotivate those whose progress is perhaps at a lower level than that of their classmates.
Competition within a class can be motivational for those at the top but for those at the bottom it has the opposite effect. One method that can help to combat this issue is using an ipsative form of assessment and feedback.
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Improving Attainment of Low Numeracy Pupils
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Not having numeracy skills can have a long lasting and damaging effect on life as an adult. Lack of numeracy can affect behaviour, employment prospects, lifeskills and the overall attitude to the future.
To minimise the risk of this happening after a pupil leaves school, all issues with regards to numeracy must be addressed as early as possible to help a low numeracy child become numerate.
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Improving attainment for C/D border students
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Improving attainment for C/D border students can mean a huge difference to their lives. It can be the difference between being offered a place at their FE college – or not, or it can mean starting an Apprenticeship – or not.
The reasons pupils fall into the C/D sector of a year are varied, but the solution is intervention to look to resolve the issues in the run up to exams as much as possible.
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Effective Summative Feedback
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Whilst formative feedback is used as a tool for regular evaluation of achievement or to look at and set up methods to stem the areas where students need to make improvement, summative feedback is just as crucial and should be used in conjunction with formative assessment to give a rounded picture of learning rather than purely on its own.
Summative feedback can be used just as effectively as formative feedback as there are a number of tools and processes for obtaining the data and information regarding the learning which has taken place.
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Setting Goals and Targets
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Evidence of learning is one of the most important benchmarks within teaching. It’s a tool which is part of the whole educative experience for all involved; learner, teacher and perhaps at times the observer. This evidence can be gathered through a range of ways, but the cornerstone of all is the setting of goals and targets.
By undertaking this work at different stages of the term or course; during the scheme of work and lesson planning and at set points as an evaluation tool, it is a way for the future planning of learning.
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Effective Formative Feedback
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Formative feedback or assessment is a crucial part of the teaching mix and is vital for use in working towards a summative assessment situation.
Formative feedback can be carried out in a number of ways which are relevant to the class as a whole or to the goals and targets of an individual but to be particularly effective should be held in a planned and cyclical manner. This way, progress can be shown over set and regular time periods and comparative achievement can be evidenced across the class.
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English Literature in the new National Curriculum
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The overarching aim for English in the National Curriculum is to promote high standards of language and literacy by equipping pupils with a strong command of the spoken and written word, and to develop their love of literature through widespread reading for enjoyment.
The syllabus for English in the new National Curriculum has been under fire in the last few weeks. This week the OCR draft English Literature syllabus appeared to have dropped US works such as Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, John Steiner’s Of Mice and Men and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible.
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Repetition for revision
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In this month’s issue of ED Journal, we explored a few methods we believed would be beneficial to a pupil’s revision programme. Although the majority of the article focused on technological aspects, the use of certain websites for example, there was one suggestion we included that did not require any kind of technology (although it certainly could be incorporated). I would like to look a little more in-depth at this strategy and the theory behind it.
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Are you ready for assessment without levels?
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September 2014 sees a major shakeup in the secondary school curriculum and assessment methods – and the indications are that many schools are still not fully prepared.
Admittedly, there has not been a great deal of time. It was only in June last year that the Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, dropped his bombshell.
He announced at the NCTL ‘Seizing Success’ conference that the new National Curriculum to be introduced in September 2014 would not involve existing National Curriculum assessment levels.
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Assessment without levels
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Yesterday the NAHT released their commission on the removal of National Curriculum levels which will come into effect in September. The release of the commission’s report is to “establish an independent commission on ‘assessment without levels’ to consider what lay behind good assessment and to look for examples of good practice already in place or developing in schools.”
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