Assessment

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Assessment and Feedback is an integral part of Teaching and Learning that supports teachers in addressing students’ misconceptions and closing gaps in their knowledge.

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Our aims of assessment are:

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• To raise standards

• To inform target setting for individual learners or groups of learners based on their targets

• To share learning goals with learners

• To identify learners in need of intervention

• To provide feedback to learners, their parents and carers and other stakeholders.

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Types of assessment:

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Formative Assessment- Assessment for Learning

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This is the regular and constant use of feedback that happen in all lessons, mostly in informal scenarios which a teacher will use to check for and immediately address misconceptions and close gaps in knowledge.  The teacher needs to be confident that all students are secure in their learning before moving on and address any misconceptions immediately.

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Summative Assessment- Assessment of Learning

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Summative assessment measures performance and indicates learner attainment.

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A summative assessment piece is deep marked by the teacher at least every term. This is the assessment at an appropriate point in the scheme of learning to assess the students’ understanding of the whole scheme, whilst leaving time at the end to allow for any further learning to take place and address any misconceptions that arise from this assessment. 

 

Reporting to Parents

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At Kinver we offer both quantitative and qualitative reports to parents. All parents will receive one detailed written report from every subject annually alongside receiving 3 additional progress reports in which staff will share judgments based on the grading categories outlined below:

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Attitude to Learning – Key Stage 3 & 4

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Students will receive an Attitude to Learning (ATL) grade based on their engagement, effort, and contribution to the classroom environment. The grading scale is as follows:

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• 1 – Outstanding
  Always completes all classwork and homework to the best of their ability, tries hard, and supports their peers with their learning.

• 2 – Good
  Mostly completes all classwork and homework to the best of their ability, usually tries hard, and often supports their peers with their learning.

• 3 – Needs Improvement
  Sometimes completes classwork and homework to the best of their ability. Can try hard but needs improvement, particularly in contributing positively to their peers and learning environment.

 

Knowledge and Aptitude Judgement – Key Stage 3

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This model assesses how well students have learned and understood the curriculum content:

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• 1 – Strong
  Mastery-level knowledge and skills. Students consistently and successfully demonstrate strong understanding and application.

• 2 – Confident and Secure
  Knowledge and skills are mostly secure. Students can apply what they have learned with confidence.

• 3 – Emerging
  Students are developing understanding, but knowledge and skills are not yet secure or consistently demonstrated.

 

Assessment Grades – Key Stage 4

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Current Grade:

The most recent assessment grade reflecting the student’s current level of attainment.

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Predicted Grade:

The grade a student is expected to achieve at the end of Year 11. This should be informed by the most recent assessment data and overall classroom performance.

 

GRIT (Growth, Resilience and Independence Task)

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Rationale:

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The effective use of GRIT it plays a pivotal role in our Teaching, Learning and Assessment systems and supports students in developing their levels of resilience. We have a responsibility to provide opportunities for students to work on difficult concepts, independently from the teacher, to prepare them for overcoming challenges and to succeed in linear examinations and beyond.

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The aim of GRIT is to encourage students to be independent learners who are able to tackle a challenge head on.  This will maximise their progress, ultimately resulting in exam success! Therefore, the skills needed for such success are going to be developed in students at Kinver High, through the use of Growth, Resilience and Independent Tasks (GRIT).

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Growth, Resilience and Independent tasks will be taught in the majority of lessons and allow time for students to complete a challenging activity on their own. Activities will vary from lesson to lesson but the main goal is to instil in students the skills needed for exam success. Skills include independence, as students learn how to tackle challenging tasks without initial teacher input, and resilience, as students begin to appreciate that by putting effort into completing the tasks, they will grow as learners. Their growth, alongside the skills developed through GRIT, can then be applied to exams where they will be assessed in a similar situation.

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Another aim of the Growth, Resilience and Independent tasks is to challenge students. Research in education has found that students who are challenged appropriately have greater problem-solving skills, are more motivated, engage in a deeper level of thinking and achieve more. By giving students challenging tasks to complete as part of GRIT, these skills are developed and can be utilised when completing challenging exam questions. This ensures that students are fully prepared in exam situations and can therefore reach their full potential.

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Whilst students are completing the Growth, Resilience and Independent tasks, teachers will monitor the progress of the class so that students can receive personalised feedback after task completion. When giving feedback, teachers will highlight the strengths of the students, address common misconceptions of the class and will model answers to demonstrate how to correctly complete the task. From this, students will learn new ways to approach challenging activities, improving on prior performance and continually developing as learners.

 

Feedback

 

Our Principles and Aims are that Marking, Feedback and Assessment:

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1. Motivates and means something to the learner.

2. Spans a variety of methods, such as whole class feedback, feeding forward, written comments, verbal and non-verbal, and places quality over quantity - always.

3. Provides opportunities to give praise and encouragement and to show learners that their work is valued, and that they are continuing to make progress, however small.

4. Provides a dialogue between teacher and learner to give clear feedback about strengths and areas for development in their work.  Feedback delivered closest to the point of action is most effective

5. Helps learners to develop an awareness of the standards they need to achieve in order to achieve particular levels of the curriculum.

6. Supports progress as we understand that new learning is fragile: learning is forgotten unless explicit steps are taken to revisit and retrieve learning. Teachers should be wary of assuming children have ‘learned it’ based on evidence drawn from the point of teaching.

7. Provides a record of progress and development. However, the most important audience is the LEARNER.

8. Provides accurate, useful subject specific feedback to our learners that makes a difference to their outcomes both academically and personally

9. Are not overly onerous to the teachers to the point that their teaching and delivery standard is affected.

10. Provides feedback to learners, their parents and carers and other stakeholders.

 

Feedback takes many forms and will include written teacher marking, verbal feedback, questioning, or using other methods such as whole class feedback forms, dynamic seating plans and DIRT. 

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If verbal feedback is given, students will be given the time to immediately use the verbal feedback that has been given to them in order to improve their work. An example of this is DIRT time given following a Whole Class Feedback (WCF) activity or during GRIT

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Feedback can be completed by the teacher or the learners (peer feedback, self-assessment, group feedback) as appropriate to the task

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We will always give feedback on strengths and areas for development using WWW (what went well) and EBI (even better if).

Where appropriate, students should also given an opportunity to act upon feedback given.      During DIRT (directed improvement and reflection time) all students will respond to feedback given and improve upon their work.