English: Assessing subject knowledge
Tests, templates and tools to help you to evaluate pupils’ subject knowledge in the English classroom
Now that the new school year is well underway, it's a perfect time to assess your students' subject knowledge and evaluate how successful their learning has been so far this year. We have selected some of the best resources to help you to identify gaps in learning and plan your work going forwards.
General English assessment tools
Use these resources to assess your students' general reading and writing skills, and to support students with assessing their own and each others' work in the English classroom.
70 exciting Assessment for Learning activities
English Assessment Feedback Sheets - reading and writing
The only writing you need to do is to input levels and to write in a WWW. The rest is taken care of as all you need to do is highlight the applicable statements
Sheets are for KS4 but could easily be adapted to suit KS3 and are easy to tweak. I've adapted many of the targets and areas for improvement from the AQA English language and literature mark schemes
They've worked like an absolute dream, saved me loads of time and Ofsted really liked how they worked across the whole department and got students more invested in making improvements. Only minor tweaks would be needed for these to work with pretty much any assessment you might be doing.
If you make a purchase and find the resource useful, why not get another one absolutely free? Simply leave a review for the resource purchased, email ireviewedajs@outlook.com with your TES username alongside a link to the resource you would like. Your free resource will then be sent over right away!
Peer Assessment Sheet
Peer Assessment and Improvement Lesson
The lesson involves:
- A broken-down success criteria sheet that can be altered depending on topic
- A PowerPoint that guides students through detailed peer-assessment
- Students are each given a skill to assess and will peer assess five other pieces of work in a carousel activity. This works best with tables of 6. At the end of the lesson each student's work will have been assessed for each skill and by 5 other people.
- Students will then improve their work based on this peer assessment before reflecting and showing their teacher where they feel they have improved their work the most.
- The teacher can then mark with minimal annotations and see if they agree with the peer assessment.
This lesson teaches itself once students have been trained into doing it!
Writing Marking Scheme For Pupil Assessment + Baseline Assessment
This is a writing marking scheme that can be used to assess any piece of writing from the lowest levels to GCSE level. It can be used in Primary and High Schools for pupil assessment and baseline assessment.
New English Literature and Language GCSE Assessment Objective posters
The different Assessment Objectives (AOs) for GCSE English Literature and English Language (provided by the Department of Education and the exam boards) have been combined into one user-friendly poster set. Also included are the Spoken Language AOs, so everything you and your students need is in one place. Each AO has been allocated a memorable image to help students understand the different skills they need to master.
The set of AOs are suitable for use from Year 7 right through to Year 11.
Included in your download are:
- A set of 12 x AO posters. The posters are available as a PowerPoint and PDF.
- An overview document explaining how the AOs for GCSE Literature and Language have been combined.
Assessment for particular texts
These resources will help you to assess how well your students understand and can write about key exam texts, including Macbeth, An Inspector Calls and A Christmas Carol.
A Christmas Carol Exam Practice Questions
Ten A Christmas Carol AQA English Literature Paper 1 exam style questions. Unlike other resources, this pack includes indicative content for each AO for EVERY question (over 24 pages of notes in total!) Additionally, student-friendly AOs are provided so students can actually access assessment objectives, and a self-reflection sheet is included that allows students to meaningfully reflect on their essays. Every a teacher and student could need to revise the 19th century novel element of the exam. Very useful exam practice questions, too!
Christmas Carol:15+ Assessment Questions
Here is a range of extracts and assessment based questions that can be used to test students knowledge of a Christmas Carol.
There are 15+ questions here than can be used to reflect each stave, and can be easily differentiated and modified as needed.
Macbeth Assessment Pack
An Inspector Calls Exam Questions
This pack focuses on the AQA 9-1 GCSE English Literature Paper 2, Section A: Modern Prose or Drama - An Inspector Calls. All tasks are designed for the 9-1 AQA GCSE English Literature: Paper Two (8702).
On the Word document, there are twelve exam-style questions that can be given to students as extra revision, practice papers, during lessons, for intervention, or as homework. There are a range of character, technique and theme questions. These assessment questions can be used with KS4 for exam preparation or as practice exercises for KS3.
The short PowerPoint contains twenty revision slides. There are a range of tips and writing frames, as well as a model answer on the PowerPoint to help your students out in their learning of, or revision of, the text.
Please also take a look at my other resources.
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Unseen poetry Assessment- 3 hour task
Romeo and Juliet Exam Practice Questions
Ten Romeo and Juliet AQA English Literature Paper 1 exam style questions. Unlike other resources, this pack includes indicative content for each AO for EVERY question (over 24 pages of notes in total!) Additionally, student-friendly AOs are provided so students can actually access assessment objectives, and a self-reflection sheet is included that allows students to meaningfully reflect on their essays. Every a teacher and student could need to revise the Shakespeare element of the exam. Very useful exam practice questions, too!
Check out our English Shop for loads more free and inexpensive KS3, KS4, KS5, Literacy and whole school resources.
AQA English Language Paper 1 and Paper 2 Knowledge Organisers
AQA English Language Paper 1 Section A package
AQA English Language Paper 1 Sections A and B package
AQA English Language Paper 1 package
AQA English Language Paper 2 Question 5 package
AQA English Language Paper 1 Question 5 package
AQA English Language Paper 2 Section A package
AQA English Language and English Literature revision package
An Inspector Calls whole scheme package
An Inspector Calls revision package
Macbeth whole scheme package
Macbeth revision package
A Christmas Carol whole scheme package
A Christmas Carol revision package
Jekyll and Hyde whole scheme package
Jekyll and Hyde revision package
Romeo and Juliet whole scheme package
Power and Conflict poetry comparing poems package
Power and Conflict poetry whole scheme package
Love and Relationships poetry whole scheme package
Unseen Poetry whole scheme package
Or check out some Citizenship, RE, PSHE + RSE resources at EC Resources
