Introduction to OER4Schools
The OER4Schools Professional Learning Resource
Review of Classwork and Homework activities
Whole group discussion (11 min).
- Did you type your responses to the questionnaire on group work on the Word document and upload it onto the server?
- How much time did it take for you to type everything?
- What is your assessment of your typing speed now compared to when you first came for the OER4Schools workshop? (Try thinking in terms of words per minute).
- You planned a group work activity using the Activity Template during the last session. Did you carry out the activity in class? If yes, share your experience by addressing the questions given below:
- Which aspect of group work did you choose as your agenda (that was also mentioned in the questionnaire for group work)?
- What was the lesson topic?
- On a scale from 1 to 5 (1 being the lowest and 5 being highest), how would you rate the effectiveness of the aspect of group work? Think in terms of achievement of learning objectives.
- What changes will you make when you repeat the same activity with another batch of pupils or with another topic?
- Did you carry out a group work activity using EtherPad? If yes, what was your open-ended question?
- How did your students respond to the activity? Share examples of: students’ discussion within their group, their written responses and their discussion across groups. Will you use EtherPad with the same aspect of group work again? Give reasons for your answer.
- For the EtherPad activity, were there any instances of the issues that were discussed during the last session such as, bully and free rider effect, learning of every member as a group responsibility etc. (refer to the last session, Unit 3 Session 6, for more issues). How did you resolve these issues? What else can you do to resolve them?
Objectives for this session
- Learning to use inventory as a self-assessment measure
- Making and practising use of Traffic Lights
- Understanding the concepts of ‘Assessment’ and ‘Assessment for Learning’
- Knowing the key aspects of ‘Assessment for Learning’ such as principles, essentials and strategies
Activity: My assessment inventory
Individual work (11 min). Complete the assessment inventory File:My assessment inventory.doc. First fill in your name next to the title. Then add the date in the first row and describe your current understanding of assessment by identifying different kinds or elements of assessment. Lastly record the assessment measures that you have used. Please take care that you mention only the measures that you have used yourself and not the measures that you know of but have not tried.
You will add to this inventory by completing another row at the beginning of each session on Assessment for Learning. Thus you can assess your own progress as the workshops proceed, and we can also see what you feel you are learning, purely for research purposes. (At CBS it will also be used to plan further sessions.) Please be honest about filling in your responses; this inventory will not be used to judge you.
Orally repeat the guidelines given above regarding the sequence of filling up the inventory. Emphasise that only the assessment measures that participants have used should be recorded.
Remind the participants to bring the inventory to every session on assessment.
Activity: Traffic Lights
Unit 4 is about ‘Assessment for Learning’ and not simply about ‘Assessment’. Before we proceed to understanding more about Assessment for Learning (AfL), let us make a resource called Traffic Lights for use during the session!
Traffic Lights is a useful resource for everyday use in classrooms in order to assess. We all know that Red, Orange and Green traffic lights on the road mean different things (Red means Stop; Orange means Get Ready and Green means Go). Their meanings for classroom application in the context of AfL are:
- RED means “I’m stuck. I need some extra help. I don’t feel I have progressed.”
- ORANGE means “I’m not quite sure. I need a little help. I feel I have made some progress.”
- GREEN means “I understand fully. I’m okay without help. I feel I have progressed a lot.”
Use of Traffic Lights in the classroom:
- While the teachers are teaching, they can ask students to hold up the Lights to assess if they should proceed to the next topic or not.
- Students can voluntarily show a Light indicating their current level of understanding. They can change the light several times during a single lesson. In this way, the student can bring their understanding to the teacher's notice without disturbing other classmates or the flow of the lesson. Teachers can address the student at an appropriate time.
- While working independently, students can display their light on the table to indicate their current status. Teachers can visit the student to provide assistance.
Eventually students are expected to independently use the Traffic Lights without teacher's instruction to do so. The Traffic Lights should become a silent way of communicating in the class.
Traffic Lights also reduce students' physical stress of standing in queues or raising their hands while waiting for the teacher's attention.
Use of Traffic Lights in groupwork:
- It doesn't have to always be the teacher who responds to red or orange lights. Students working in a group can also help each other. In Unit 3 we emphasised that groupwork is most successful when groups themselves are given responsibility for making sure that all members understand. Traffic lights can alert students to the need to assist their peers.
- One Zambian teacher's reflection on trying out the technique:
[Judith quote]
Making Traffic Lights:
There can be various ways of making Traffic Lights depending on the availability of materials. Some suggestions of different materials are:
- coloured paper (red, orange, green) such as charts, paper from old magazines etc.
- coloured packing cardboards such as toothpaste box
- coloured computer printouts
- cloth material
- coloured plastic bags
- coloured flags or
- simply coloured pencils or crayons (if each child has them).
Given below is one simple way of making them with a white A4 sheet of paper and marker pens.
Provide the following materials to the participants so that they can make their own Traffic Lights:
- A4 sheets of paper (one per three participants, but it is always better to have some extra)
- Red, Orange and Green marker pens
- Crayons/ coloured pencils/ paints (if available)
- Scissors/ long scale (if available)
Normally 10-15 minutes are sufficient for this activity if enough material is available for each participant. Enough material means that there is negligible or no waiting time for using material.
Where materials for making traffic lights are not available in sufficient quantities for classroom use, you could think of alternatives, such as children giving various hand signals corresponding to red / yellow / green.
Individual work (11 min). Follow these steps to make your own Traffic Lights for AfL (see pictures for reference):
- Take an A4 sheet of white paper. Fold it along the long side into 3 equal parts (one sheet can make 3 sets of Traffic Lights). Cut along the folds with scissors or tear using a long scale to make 3 strips of paper.
- Fold one strip further into 3 sections along the short side.
- Write ‘RED’, ‘ORANGE’ and ‘GREEN’ (in capitals and bold) using the right coloured marker pens (if possible) on the three different sections. You can colour them with respective colours if crayons, coloured pencils or paints are available.
- Now reverse the strip of paper or keep it upside down. Then,
- behind section RED, write: I’m stuck. I need some extra help. I don’t feel I have progressed.
- behind section ORANGE, write: I’m not quite sure. I need a little help. I feel I have made some progress.
- behind section GREEN, write: I understand fully. I’m okay without help. I feel I have progressed a lot.
Whole Group (11 min). What do you know about ‘Assessment for Learning’ at this stage? Show by holding up or putting forward on the table your Traffic Light!
Now discuss:
- What are the different ways in which I can use Traffic Lights in my classroom?
- In what ways can I respond to each colour of the Traffic Light?
- When is it appropriate for students to respond instead of me? What are the pros and cons of that?
If the number of participants is 10 or less, make a note of the Traffic Light colour of each participant on a flip chart. You can prepare the flip chart with the participants’ names listed on it, in advance.
Activity: Introducing Assessment for Learning (AfL)
Whole Group (11 min). Watch 2 segments of this video:
VIDEO
Formative Assessment in Schools.mp4
The description of the video
Video/Formative Assessment in Schools.mp4, https://oer.opendeved.net/wiki/Video/Formative_Assessment_in_Schools.mp4, Duration: 12:34 watch on YouTube, local play / download options / download from dropbox)
0:00 - 0.56 (introduction to AfL), 4.38 - end (example of 10-year-olds doing peer assessment)
In this video, Shirley Clarke explains the concept of ‘Assessment for Learning’ and its elements in brief. Some elements can also be seen in action.
Whole Group (11 min). Questions for reflection:
- How is the concept of AfL different from the commonly known notion of assessment?
- What are some of the elements of AfL that have been mentioned in the video?
- Which element(s) of AfL did you find most interesting? Why?
Activity: Understanding ‘Assessment’ and ‘Assessment for Learning’
By now, you will have already discussed some of the points that will arise on this PowerPoint. Do a mental assessment to see if your understanding of assessment and AfL advances by watching the PowerPoint (File:Unit 4.1 Assessment and Assessment for Learning.ppt).
Play the slideshow of the Power Point ‘File:Unit 4.1 Assessment and Assessment for Learning.ppt’. Read aloud the contents of the slides if you think it will help the participants.
During slide 8, tell participants that AfL strategies are in yellow ellipses.
During slide 11, ask participants to read pages 3 to 6 of the VVOB handout called ‘Questioning the Questions’ 
that was distributed during Unit 2 Session 2, as a homework task.
During slide 12 titled ‘Self-assessment’, ask the participants to show their understanding about assessment and AfL on their Traffic Lights. Then take the following steps:
- If anybody shows ‘orange light’ or ‘red light’, ask them the specific topic to which they are referring.
- Then ask other participants who have shown ‘green light’ to explain the topic to their peers.
- If doubts are still not resolved, record the topic and include it in your feedback about the session. Assure participants that you will get back with more information.
Remember the AfL strategies will be discussed in the upcoming sessions. So if doubts are about the strategies, inform the participants that the future sessions will cover them.
If you had prepared a flip chart with the traffic light of each participant before the activity, record their current light. You can also ask the participants to come up and write their current traffic light. This will help them to see their own progress.
Whole Group (11 min). Questions for reflection on PowerPoint
- What steps, do you anticipate, you will have to take to implement AfL in your classrooms?
- What issues do you think will arise in implementing AfL in your classrooms? Discuss ways of resolving them with your peers.
- Are there any current practices which are useful or can become useful for AfL with some modifications? For example, current practice of marking notebooks can include qualitative feedback. Discuss these practices, the modifications and their use for AfL with examples.
- Do you think ‘Traffic Lights’ is a useful strategy for AfL? Why? (Tips: targeted help, self-assessment etc)
- How would you respond to each colour when using Traffic Lights in your classroom?
Homework
- My Assessment Inventory is available electronically (File:My assessment inventory.doc). Type the answers that you have written on paper, on this electronic version. As soon as you download the inventory, first save it with a new filename, which includes your name. For instance, if your name is “Esther Phiri”, save the document with the name “My assessment inventory - Esther Phiri.doc”. Save the document to your ‘files area’ on the desktop, so that it will get copied to the server. Remember to bring the paper inventory for every session and fill up the electronic inventory every week, from now on.
- Do the activity of making Traffic Lights with your students. You can be creative about the use of materials depending on availability.
- Try Traffic Lights as a part of one or more teaching lessons. You could employ the help of classroom assistants (from your own or another class) to resolve the doubts of ‘red lights’ and ‘orange lights’; for example those with ‘green lights’ could then help their peers? Record your experience of using Traffic Lights and your students’ responses on the dictaphone.
- Read pages 3 to 6 of the VVOB handout called ‘Questioning the Questions’ that was distributed during Unit 2 Session 2. Note any issues that arise for discussion during the next session.
- Consider watching the video clip and the Power Point presentation together again during the week. This will help you in understanding the concept of AfL by seeing some examples from real classrooms.
Acknowledgements
We are very grateful to:
- Dr. Sue Swaffield, Senior Lecturer in Educational Leadership and School Improvement at Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge for suggestions and permission to use some of her slides in the Power Point presentation;
- Dr Shirley Clarke, for permission to use clips from her DVD 'The Power of Formative Assessment' for the session;
- Northern Ireland Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment, for permission to use their document 'CCEA: Afl Guidance KS 1-2 – 2007' in developing the session.
References
Assessment Reform Group (2002) Assessment for Learning: 10 Principles. Cambridge: University of Cambridge School of Education.
Criticos, C., Long, R., Moletsane, R., Mthiyane, N., & Mays, T. (2009). Getting practical about classroom-based teaching for the National Curriculum Statement. South Africa: Oxford University Press.
