Teachers' and students' roles in formative assessment
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Assessment for Learning
How did teachers make formative use of summative testing?
Teachers developed three main activities to make their summative tests useful in giving feedback for learning:
- using peer and self assessment to make revision more effective;
- designing practice test questions, and
- marking summative test answers;
A 'traffic light' system was used in some classes during revision activities. Pupils coded revision keywords red, amber and green according to their levels of understanding of the subject matter. Red indicated little or no understanding, green represented a high understanding. The pupils' homework tasks were then to try to turn red areas amber or green through further study. In this active approach to revision students also changed some green areas red or amber as they realised that they were not clear about them.
Teachers also explored the idea of engaging pupils in setting limited sets of test questions in order to extend their knowledge and understanding. As one teacher explained:
'...pupils were encouraged to write their own questions based on the work covered...We discussed the difference between learning strings of facts and trying to learn answers to possible questions....I believe those that grasped this apparently simple idea made a real sea-change in the way they reviewed their work prior to a test.'
After a test, pupils were asked to mark one another's test paper in peer-groups. Some teachers provided a mark scheme, but others asked the pupils to compose a mark scheme - an activity which made them think about the purpose of the question and about what might count as a good answer. The approach and the advantages here were very similar to those seen in the peer-marking of homework.
