2 Assessment as a tool for improvement

Look at the Teachers' TV video, http://www.teachersmedia.co.uk/ videos/ action-teacher-video-primary [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] (there are three videos, the relevant part starts at about 18 minutes), and this account of a school peer assessment, project http://www.teachingexpertise.com/ articles/ two-stars-and-a-wish-1394.

‘Two wishes and a star’ is a technique for encouraging children to reflect on their own and others’ learning through the use of peer feedback. The ‘two stars’ form the positive feedback on a piece of work and the 'wish' indicates where development could be made. What might ’Two Wishes and a Star‘ look like in your ICT lessons?  What technologies might support some of the assessment types and feedback/informative assessment?

You might use the prompts described in the article, How ICT resources can support learning at primary level.

• How does your school currently use ICT to support assessment for learning? Is ICT used purely to record information or do you use ICT to review performance and identify areas for improvement? Do you use ICT to set children specific tasks in order to inform them of a child's current understanding of a learning objective? For example, do you set tasks for which children use an interactive teaching programme (ITP)?
• Do you recognise the opportunities that interactive whiteboards can provide for children to give feedback and share ideas? Do you use ICT to model ways for children to review, modify and evaluate their work – for example, within a plenary session?
• Do you use ICT to record and present collaboratively children's feedback and ideas?
• Do you use ICT to annotate resources and on-screen files with children's responses and contributions, deepening your own understanding of the next learning and teaching stage they will need to plan?
• Do you use ICT tools to record scrutiny of children's work in order to identify areas of weakness and targets for improvement? For example, do you use Excel to record children's achievement across a particular standardised assessment task?
• Have you reviewed your current methods in terms of effectiveness at teaching, child and school improvement level?