With our Key Stage 3 Assessment Outcomes reverse engineered from Key Stage 4 Assess Outcomes we have gone onto designing our long-term plans or progression grids for “Assessment Without Levels.” A number of our Curriculum and Subject Leaders are now focusing their efforts on outlining their assessment protocol. Now, the early and innovative work of a handful of teachers within the Assessment CPD Focus group is paying dividends. These staff have already test Quick Key in their classrooms and are providing very pertinent solutions to the workload and time inefficiencies or purposeful assessment. Ripe for the picking, we have recruited two more staff to our Quick Key working party this week. Our successes are perking the curiosity of the staff.
In Geography, we are working on converting the baseline assessment to a Quick Key test. We are focusing on how we can assessment geographical understanding, confident we can assess geographical literacy and comprehension. Converting the written baseline test is a challenge, primarily as Quick Key has no written component. We think that there may need to be an addition short answer question section.
Why work with the baseline test? One, it is the first test Year 7 experience and the marking commitment was considerable. Second, pupils joined our school with very varying Geography knowledge, staff felt they needed to know more about the pupils than their generalised abilities or Key Stage 2 / CAT test scores. Third, the aim is for all pupils to retake the same Geography quiz/ questions and then compare the mark sheets following the first term learning. Often very powerful. Miss Granger was keen to stress the importance of sharing test scores visually, “showing” areas for improvement and against the class average. Of course Quick Key could do that, as well as Question and Class analytics. We are hoping for a bulk print feedback sheet that pupils can stick in the books with a space for targeted development. Something very similar to @dataeducators Exam Feedback Tool.
Writing good questions is as time consuming as marking. The tagging / filtering and access to a searchable bank of “community” questions is fast becoming the key focus of teacher conversations.
Lastly, we have had a few requests for a fast assessment / response systems. Hence the idea for a FAST PASS (not dissimilar to an exit ticket).
- 10/15 questions, printed on the back of a 10/15 question Quick Key Ticket. Would larger lozenges expedite scanning time / easy? Which is already very reliable / quick.
- Bulk print (with student names / codes)
- Handed out at the end of class / stapled in planners.
- Collected and scanned.
It is very much the physical ticket interaction between pupil / teacher that is important to our teachers. The FAST PASS – marked / scanned during the next lesson starter activity provides instant feedback for both the pupil and the teacher. It is the impact of instant feedback that we are exploring now.
Size matters. Questions are printed on the reverse of the ticket. This may mean smaller text font and horizontal ABCDE options.
Q. What is 4 x 4 ?
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I let you know how we get on with the rewritten Quick Key Year 7 baseline test, conversion and coverage, in a few weeks time.
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