A time and a place for everything

How and when to use formative, summative, periodic (and dynamic?)

assessment

Rachel Hawkes

Summative Assessment:A mark or grade (i.e. a summary)

Formative Assessment:Feedback that tells you what you have done well and what you have to do to progress

Periodic Assessment:Broad picture of achievement, drawing on a wide range of evidence from classroom and homework activities.

Dynamic Assessment:Assessment and instruction are integrated, so that assessment does not measure past achievement but movement towards future achievement. i.e. what learners can do with support. It is both aspirational and developmental.

Rachel Hawkes

Who is assessment for?Who What is the purpose? Most suitable form of

assessment?

Student To know what they know, what they need to know, how to improve

A mixture of levels and formative comments preferred

Teacher

To know what learners know (against identified targets), to inform teaching, to account for and respond to individual differences

Summative (for PM!) and KS4 predictions – other best through formative/periodic

Parent To know how well their child is progressing and why , and how s/he can improve

Level/grade provides comparison BUT why & how require formative/periodic

HOD

To know how whole classes are performing against identified targets, and to be able to account for individual differences between current and targeted performance

Levels/grades requiredConsistency important summative BUT explanations require formative/periodic

SMTTo know how whole cohorts in one subject area are performing against identified targets

Not important as long as levels/grades available

Rachel Hawkes

Assessment in the classroomLesson Observation Form PromptsEvidence of Assessment

Learning: [Do learners know what they have learnt? Do they play a part in assessing themselves, each other? Are they involved in setting future learning objectives?]

Teaching: [How does teaching check understanding? Does teaching respond to assessment of previous class work, homework, or contributions during the lesson? Is marking focused, diagnostic and aids progress? Does teaching allow learners to assess their own and each others’ learning?]NB Evidence for these judgements may come from exercise books and mark books (or equivalent)

Rachel Hawkes

All teachers need to know…!

• Their students’ individual strengths, areas for development

• The nature of progress in each skill across and within each key stage

Rachel Hawkes

Profile 1 David understands readily and is keen to

communicate. A risk taker, he often launches in to speaking without having thought through how the sentence might end up. He is very spontaneous but because he is quite lazy with learning verb endings, he half knows a lot of words, but most sentences will have mistakes and many will end up ambiguous because of wrong verb endings.

Rachel Hawkes

Profile 2 Emma has an excellent memory and is really

keen to do well, and also prepared to put in serious time and commitment to memorising. She is quite anxious and under confident, but on top of this, she does not understand unexpected questions readily and is prone to answering the question she thinks you might be asking. In addition, her pronunciation is not secure and she has difficulty retaining the sounds of more complex words over time.

Rachel Hawkes

Profile 3 Simon is extremely bright and adapts his

extensive English vocabulary to his foreign language learning very well. He is secure with all tenses, using his own conditional perfect in his last oral assessment! Because he is ambitious and always wants to say exactly the right answer, he can sound stilted in oral examinations. He can get tongue-tied as he is considering the various different options!

Rachel Hawkes

Profile 4 Vanessa is also very bright. She doesn’t seem

at ease with Spanish and says that she prefers German. However, recently she has begun to be much more spontaneous in class, and her knowledge of grammar is sufficiently well developed for her to build sentences creatively and independently. In oral exams she doesn’t sound as confident as she should be, and there is a real danger she is underselling herself here, as her knowledge and application of grammar is sufficiently well developed for her to be able to make her own meaningful exchanges.

Rachel Hawkes

David understands readily and is keen to communicate. A risk taker, he often launches in to speaking without having thought through how the sentence might end up. He is very spontaneous but because he is quite lazy with learning verb endings, he half knows a lot of words, but most sentences will have mistakes and many will end up ambiguous because of wrong verb endings.

Emma has an excellent memory and is really keen to do well, and also prepared to put in serious time and commitment to memorising. She is quite anxious and under confident, but on top of this, she does not understand unexpected questions readily and is prone to answering the question she thinks you might be asking. In addition, her pronunciation is not secure and she has difficulty retaining the sounds of more complex words over time.

Simon is extremely bright and adapts his extensive English vocabulary to his foreign language learning very well. He is secure with all tenses, using his own conditional perfect in his last oral assessment! Because he is ambitious and always wants to say exactly the right answer, he can sound stilted in oral examinations. He can get tongue-tied as he is considering the various different options!

Vanessa is also very bright. She doesn’t seem at ease with Spanish and says that she prefers German. However, recently she has begun to be much more spontaneous in class, and her knowledge of grammar is sufficiently well developed for her to build sentences creatively and independently. In oral exams she doesn’t sound as confident as she should be, and there is a real danger she is underselling herself here, as her knowledge and application of grammar is sufficiently well developed for her to be able to make her own meaningful exchanges.

Fitness for purpose: Which ‘next steps’ for which learners?

David Emma

Simon Vanessa

Rach

el H

aw

kes

Organising teaching & learning• Annotated seating plans• Before and after • Carousel lessons (include individual feedback

activities)• Pair/group work – watch, listen, gather

information feedback in mini-plenaries• Strategies for differentiation when finished• Record one table group (or several pairs) each

lesson whole class over time

Rachel Hawkes

Whole class oral interaction• Maximise use of open questions• Use images to open the context and allow for

a variety of ‘right’ answers• Thinking time/Pupil talk in pairs first• ‘no hands up’ policy• Withhold corrective move – ask several pupils

first• Longer exchanges with one pupil• Encourage pupils to respond to others’

answers of others• Respond to content more than form in

spontaneous interaction Rachel Hawkes

Periodic Assessment

• QCDA sample material online• French (levels 3-8), Spanish (levels 4-7),

German (levels 4-7)• Range of evidence across 4 skills and 3-4 topic

areas• Teacher assessment commentary• Learner targets for development

Rachel Hawkes

Pays

Capitale

Langues

On mange

On boit

Climat

Autres détailsRachel Hawkes

Les pays francophones: listening activityPupil C listened to a recording of native French speakers talking about different countries and noted details in French.

Listening and speaking: In the listening activity, Pupil C noted all the main points required from familiar spoken language in accurate French. He spoke with his partner, answering prepared questions about his chosen country. Although mainly in the present tense, he has varied his language and used a range of vocabulary. He then went on to ask the questions himself.

Rachel Hawkes

Rachel Hawkes

Listening: In the listening activity, Pupil D was able to understand some familiar language in this new context as well as some less familiar topic-related vocabulary. She has noted the details for each job in mostly accurate French.

Métier idéal: listening transcript The recording was quite fast and pupils heard it twice.

Rachel Hawkes

Conclusions

• ‘Meaningful’ vs ‘manageable’• Balance between summative and formative• Integrating teaching and assessment• Improving speaking and writing through

modelling and feedback• Improving listening and reading through

strategy development

Rachel Hawkes

Rachel Hawkes Director of Language College / Assistant Principal / AST / SSAT MFL Lead Practitioner

Comberton Village College, Cambridgeshire

Website: www.rachelhawkes.com Email: rhawkes@comberton.cambs.sch.k

“Those who do not move do not notice their chains.”

Rosa Luxemburg