Assessment, Assessment, Assessment!

Primary six have been assessing their learning through a variety of different methods over the last few weeks. I am noticing significant improvements and I feel very proud of them.

• The children have been involved in generating learning intentions and success criteria for a variety of different lessons. As a result they now understand that our learning intention is the “what I am learning” and the success criteria is the “how I am learning”. They are able to identify the key skills that are likely to be taught from the context of a lesson and the steps required for success. I have also noticed that they now able to independently create success criteria that is both detailed and specific to the task.

• I have been building in more time for plenaries during my lessons to ensure that my learners have the opportunity to assess in a variety of different ways across all curricular areas. The children have engaged in peer, self and group assessment over the last few weeks. We have used strategies such as: traffic lighting, two stars and a wish, tickled pink and green for growth, ratings against the success criteria, high five of learning, tweeting new knowledge and having the opportunity to assess my teaching. This has been particularly beneficial for us, the children are using the language of learning “Learnish” throughout the assessments and therefore are developing a deeper understanding of the vocabulary. They are creating more realistic and achievable targets to progress their learning. I am enjoying receiving feedback on my teaching and I think the children feel like they have more ownership of their learning when they see me changing my practice accordingly.

• Primary six have also been using the assessment matrix to track their progress and think of what they have not achieved yet. These were shared during parental consultations and it was interesting to see that the majority of comments matched my own.

• Lastly, the children have been using their personalised learning pits as an assessment tool. During lessons the children have been placing their names at where they think they are on the learning pit. If they placed themselves at the bottom of the pit then we have a learning conversation about strategies to help them out of the pit.

Overall, we are making good progress on our visible learning journey and my class are becoming assessment capable learners.