Curriculum and Assessment Developments at Key Stages 3 and 4

Activities with student teachers

In addition to general work on formative (assessment for learning) and summative assessment, we have found it useful to engage in particular activities that enable the student teachers to become familiar with the National Curriculum levels, and how they may be applied in the assessment of student teachers' work. One activity that we've found helpful in giving the student teachers some 'ownership' of the levels is to engage in an activity that asks them to redraft the descriptors to make them more easily accessible to Key Stage 3 pupils. Splitting the student teachers into groups and giving – say – each group four levels (from either speaking and listening, reading or writing) to work with can mean that as a whole group 'pupil-friendly' level descriptors can be generated for all levels. For example, a group working on Level 4 Writing would need to draft a clear, accessible statement of what a pupil at that level can do, and then by looking up to Level 5, suggest the kinds of things a pupil would need to do to 'move up'. The resulting communally produced document can thus be a helpful resource not only enabling student teachers to assess pupils' work, but also to set meaningful targets. Clearly, many English departments have undertaken such activities themselves (or even generated sub-levels to assist assessment and target setting), but allowing student teachers to undertake such an activity as a group really does force them to engage with, dissect and analyse the level descriptors. Such an activity can be followed by asking student teachers to look at examples of pupils' work to see how far the level descriptors are useful in evaluating what a pupil has done well, and enabling them to set targets for development and improvement (this could be written or spoken work).

It's worth, too, asking student teachers to engage with the APP materials, if only to explore another model for the assessment of pupil progress, particularly as this may in future be adopted as a model for teacher assessment at key Stage 3. We've found it useful to do this in conjunction with a consideration of D'Arcy's work on the assessment of writing (D'Arcy, 2000). In this work, D'Arcy takes examples of pupils' writing and compares assessment via test criteria with her own 'interpretative' response. In a similar vein, we have asked student teachers to look at examples of the work in this text and come to some 'summative' judgements initially using their own 'sense' of how good the work is, and then applying APP criteria. In doing this, and then in considering D'Arcy's critique of the 'technical' approach to the assessment of writing, interesting discussions can arise as to how we might most appropriately judge quality in pupils' work. Additionally, of course, student teachers become familiar with the aspects of the APP criteria.