A friend of mine once told me about a lesson she taught on apostrophes for an Ofsted inspection. This was at a time when Ofsted were particularly keen on seeing evidence of Assessment for Learning, so she planned to include lots of AfL tasks in the lesson.
She taught the lesson and about halfway through she checked for understanding of the apostrophe of omission using mini whiteboards. Unfortunately, most of the pupils had got the question she’d asked wrong - and even more unfortunately, that hadn’t been in her plan at all. She’d expected them all to get it right, so she could move on to the apostrophe of possession.
Panicked, she ploughed on regardless, as though they had given the right answers.
Assessment for learning strategies
What happened at the end of the lesson?
It was graded as outstanding, and the inspectors said they were particularly impressed with her sophisticated use of AfL techniques.
This is as good an example as any of how the form of AfL - the mini whiteboards, the lollipop sticks, the no hands up - came to replace its substance. And what is the substance of AfL? It’s the action that is taken in response to the information the teacher gets from the children. If there is no action, then feedback hasn’t happened.
In Embedded Formative Assessment, Professor Dylan Wiliam uses the analogy of a thermometer and a thermostat to make this point. The aim of a thermometer is to measure the temperature. The aim of a thermostat is to change the temperature based on the measurement from the thermometer.
When we are giving feedback, we need to be like a thermostat and close the feedback loop by making some kind of change. If we set up the assessment, receive the information, but plough on with a rigid lesson plan regardless, then the feedback loop isn’t complete.
Feedback solutions
One of the things that makes giving feedback so difficult is that it can be hard to plan for. If you have a set lesson plan, or a tight curriculum to stick to, then deviating from the plan can feel like you’re losing valuable time. For trainee teachers, and for those being inspected by Ofsted, it also feels risky to depart from a set plan, as the class may start to behave in unpredictable ways, and the teacher themselves may have to address content they haven’t prepared for.
There are a couple of possible solutions to this problem.
One is to increase the number of feedback loops, particularly when brand new content is being introduced. Rather than one big question in the middle or at the end of a lesson, a series of quick, closed answer questions throughout the lesson can help prevent pupils from getting lost in the first place.
The second is to anticipate common misconceptions. Often, the errors pupils make are predictable, and even have their own internal logic.
You can then devise a set response to these common errors. And when you start to anticipate misconceptions like this, it leads to a second kind of feedback: feedback on the curriculum itself.
If lots of pupils are falling into these traps, there might be ways you can change the curriculum or lesson plan to prevent or address such misconceptions in the first place.
Daisy Christodoulou is director of education at No More Marking and the author of Making Good Progress? and Seven Myths About Education. She tweets @daisychristo
