Latest articles from the Innovate My School community.

This June, we'll be delving into how schools are Assessing Assessment.

Traditional ways of assessment can often lead to an increase in stress levels for both staff and students. We'll be exploring the impact assessment is making on teacher workload, and assessment experts RS Assessment from Hodder Education will be demonstrating how important it is for schools to have access to reliable assessment advice and resources.

Read on for more ideas, examples and tips for assessing assessment in your school.

Revision & Assessment (22)

The best activities for assessment success

ox•y•mo•ronnouna figure of speech in which apparentlycontradictory terms appear in conjunctioneg “assessment without levels”

3 common SLT assessment issues and how to avoid them

Most schools use formative assessment throughout the year, and then have some sort of test at the end as practice for SATs. This data-handling may be done via a commercial system, a tracking system they have created in-house, or through one of the paper-based approaches that many schools are still using. It doesn’t matter which method you choose, but it does matter how the data is being used.

Image credit: Unsplash // Chris Liverani.

Can more testing reduce workload AND enhance learning?

Proposing the idea that more testing may be the answer to improving pupil outcomes would undoubtedly result in heads in the staffroom turning in absurdity - or the cause of a full riot on social media. It is the belief of many that pupils are being over-assessed already, so why introduce more? It is felt that too much assessment is affecting the mental health of children, or squeezing the joy ...

Adventures in coded marking

The infamous saying “tax shouldn’t be taxing” is something that I feel rings true for its synonym, to assess. Assessment is a key element of teaching and learning, both in its summative and formative forms, and enables for a review of progress. Assessment is most valuable when it translates into effective feedback which supports bespoke, personalised future-learning, both empowering students to take ownership for development and equipping teachers with ...

Image credit: Flickr // Paige Bollman // [Extended version of the article published in the Innovate My School Guide 2017/18.]

Assessment: The old mistakes, the new opportunities

Over recent years there have been some fundamental changes to the education system in England: a new National Curriculum, the removal of levels in national curriculum assessments and revisions to general qualifications. New, more demanding tests were introduced for Key Stage 1 and 2 in 2016. At GCSE level, revised examinations in English and Mathematics were introduced during that year, with all other subjects coming on-stream over the next couple of years. The ...

Image credit: Flickr // Sun Valley Group of Schools.

Learner-led assessment: The key to higher attainment?

We all know that the purpose of formative assessment is to make students aware of the standard of work they are producing, and more importantly, to help them understand how they can improve. Too often, however, assessment becomes just another formality, so entrenched in the system that we forget to stop and think about both its effectiveness and the learner experience. Sometimes, feedback simply does not translate into improvements, and ...

Image courtesy of Ozobot and Technology Will Save Us.

5 games that secretly teach children to code

Of course it’s important for kids to learn how to read and write, and there are plenty of games to help them do that, not to mention textbooks. However, in our increasingly technological society, coding is another crucial skill — and it helps when kids learn it young.

5 quick tips for tackling the exam period

As a teacher there is a great deal you can do to help your students through the exam period. Naturally you have taught them the subject area comprehensively, but you should also explain exam technique and give them some practical steps to make the most of their revision time.

Planning the piece: Essay tips for students

Letting an essay assignment get to the head is common with students, so teachers are always looking at methods to reduce this problem. Innovate My School newcomer James Harlan discusses the suggestions he gives to students.. Writing your essay could be a task that hangs over your head like a dark cloud. Like a forthcoming rain, the deadline approaches so fast while you are being paralysed by the doom and ...

Help students satisfy the exam board criteria by using predictive grids

Having students identify for themselves where they think they need to improve and then comparing this to their performance on a task will give an accurate insight into which parts of the criteria they do not understand how to satisfy. The teacher can then point this out and explain how it can be achieved. A good method to conduct this is by using 'predictive grids': Too often, students see the ...

Using pictures for effective teaching of inference and early comprehension skills

‘Reading pictures can be as easy or difficult as reading printed text.’ Gomez-Reino, 1996 My research into how to teach young children explicit inference skills began in 2001 when I observed that there was a discrepancy in my school between many of our fluent reader's ability to read and their overall comprehension. Evidence worryingly showed that an emphasis placed on phonics was producing readers who could decode the words but often had ...

Place your bets! How students can know where to improve

In his latest blog post, English teacher Adam Lewis describes an innovative yet stunningly simple method students can use to ensure they are improving in the actual areas where they need to improve. The so-called 'scaffolds' that Adam writes about are the tools a student may or may not need to answer a question and can 'bet' on, such as working with a partner, but there's a catch - each ...