Embedding Formative Assessment – Year Two, a new but familiar journey

Sarahn Deane, Assistant Principal at Shireland Collegiate Academy

At Shireland Collegiate Academy, we have come to the end of our two year Embedding Formative Assessment Programme. At the end of our first year, we saw that teachers valued the programme and could see a difference in their classrooms when being consistent with the use of whole class response systems; embedded use of WALTs and WILFs; and a school-wide ‘no hands up’ strategy.

The challenge we faced for year two was in keeping the momentum with year one staff without it seeming repetitive and welcoming new staff into the Teacher Learning Community (TLC) structure without it seeming confusing.

With this in mind, rather than dive straight into the next workshop in the programme, we started with a relaunch. This involved everyone together in the auditorium and a display of a quotation that was on the original SSAT launch PowerPoint given to schools participating in the programme:

Teachers make the difference. Students taught by the most effective teacher will learn in six months what those taught by the average teacher learn in a year.
(Hanushek & Rivkin, 2006)

And who in the room wanted to be average? No one.

From then on, it was a matter of revisiting the impact we had seen from year one and outlining how the TLCs would work. We had revised this from the previous year, changing from TLC groups being dotted all around the school, to all in the same area – the idea behind this was that it would foster a greater sense of community. The second change was that, rather than volunteers or willing conscripts, our new TLC leads, and co-leads would be chosen by the group. This news was greeted by some nervous laughter but worked out well. We also made sure that the TLC leads could include this role as one of their appraisal targets.

A further method we employed to embed formative assessment throughout the academy was to ensure that all our learning walk, lesson observation and work scrutiny templates contained success criteria for exemplary practice in formative assessment. This meant that teachers were all very clear on what strategies they could employ and were keen to work on any emerging areas for development.

Year two showed impact with:

• More thoughtful learning intentions linked to other skills.
• Regular use of hinge questions to assess understanding and address misconceptions.
• Whole class response strategies used routinely in lessons.
• Thinking time given to students and time for students to elaborate on their initial responses.

However, one of the most noticeable and evident differences has been seeing teacher comments, both written and verbal, that move learning forward and students responding to this feedback in order to improve their work.

One of the most valuable things about the workshops is the opportunity to hear from the students and we had some very thoughtful responses about what helps them most in their learning. For instance:

I think it’s really helpful when the teacher talks their thinking out loud to create a good answer on the spot rather than having an answer pre-prepared. I can see the steps taken and the thinking required. I can then use the same sort of thinking for my own answers, and it makes my work more successful.
Jasmeet, Year 9 student.

Other things that they found effective included:

• The use of randomisers and no hands up so they all knew they were being forced to think for themselves instead of relying on the people who always put their hand up to answer.
• Personalised comments about their work from their teachers and peers.
• Being able to verbalise a response in a pair before committing it out loud to the whole room.
• Feeling more confident to express when they are not sure about something because the collaboration time showed them that they were not on their own.

And to top it all, we celebrated our successful end to the programme with drinks, samosas, staff awards and a big thank you.

American author Pat Conroy wrote that, “Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers.” Well, our chambers, or classrooms may not be the quietest and a teacher’s brain chambers are seldom quiet but our travels along the road of embedding formative assessment are certainly not going to be ending. We will be continuing with the TLC structure and have agreed to becoming an EFA Ambassador School so that we can share our experience and impact of the programme with other schools. We are looking forward to the next part of our EFA journey.