Meanwhile discussion continues over various aspects of the assessment system and, of course, the potential significance of testing at age 11 as the government seeks to implement its new secondary modern system. I do hope the system is extended so that every teacher can deny a child access to their classroom unless they pass aa test. It would make life much easier.
On a different note, the ever helpful Michael Tidd published a survey he had undertaken into KS2 writing moderation. he was checking out what people understood by 'independence'. he set a series of questions (see below) and got results suggesting there were wide variations in what people thought was legitimately accepted as independent, what wasn't and whether they thought it was acceptable but not sensible or acceptable and sensible.
the questions were:
1.A teacher shares success criteria on the
board before writing?
2.A teacher collects key vocabulary and
shares it on the board before writing?
3.A teacher reads and shares examples of
good sentences etc during independent writing?
4.A child uses a dictionary of their own
accord to check their own spellings?
5.A teacher underlines misspelt words for a
child to correct independently?
6.A teacher marks ‘sp’ in
the margin of a line where spelling needs to be corrected, for a pupil to find
and correct?
7.More able pupils sit with less confident
spellers to give peer feedback on spelling corrections?
8.A teacher directs a child to add a
sentence containing a semi-colon to a piece of writing?
9.A teacher sits with a pupil asking them
where they think new paragraphs should have been used, before re-drafting?
10.A teacher provides verbal feedback on
drafts, before pupils produce up to 5 drafts?
I added two more for the purpose of discussion with moderators:
11.( linked to q8) A teacher tells the
class to review the framework criteria/tick list after they have produced a
first draft. S/he tells them to ensure that they have met the criteria e.g. by
ensuring they have a semi-colon sentence, a passive sentence or two, some words
off the year 6 list etc.?
12.( linked to q10) a teacher gives
verbal feedback before pupils write their second and final draft?
The outcomes can be viewed on his blog https://michaelt1979.wordpress.com . He has written lots more of interest on the topic but ,as I was prepping a moderators' meeting, I thought I'd look at the questions too. Independence is a fraught area and likely to be an issue in 2017 as well.
My responses are below and are introduced by the guidance from STA and by guidance I gave out to moderators and schools following STA presentations to local authorities. I am grateful to colleague Sarah Coldbeck who attended a different presentation to me so we were able to confirm each other's understanding of what was said.
Clarification on
evidence for writing that is allowed as ‘working independently’
If writing evidence has
been redrafted by the pupil, this is acceptable as independent work. The
redrafted work may be in response to self, peer, or group evaluation, or after
discussion with the teacher.
Pupils can also
independently use classroom resources such as dictionaries, thesauruses, word
banks, classroom displays, books or websites.
It
would not be independent if the work was modelled or heavily scaffolded, copied
or paraphrased or where the teacher has directed the pupil to change specific
words or punctuation. STA
guidance
Guidance
from myself to schools and moderators Feb 2016.
The
writing that children produce and that moderators will look at should be part
of their normal classroom practice in writing. Cold tasks, exam condition style
sessions or things done purely for assessment purposes are not required or
desirable. The writing could be produced after teaching of a particular text
type. Success criteria might have been generated or shared and could still be
on show as children wrote. Discussion of ideas, immersion in or magpieing of
vocabulary and exploring examples of the text type are part of good classroom
practice and do not disqualify the writing from assessment. The key point about
independence is that children make their own choices about how to apply what
they have been taught or have discussed. Directly copying from a model would
not count as independent and neither would something heavily scaffolded.
Use of
dictionaries, working walls and word banks are perfectly acceptable and the
child still has to make a decision about when to deploy these resources and
refer to them. Electronic spelling aids are not acceptable though, as you have
to confirm that they spell independently.
Drafting,
polishing and improving one’s writing are integral to the writing process and
encouraged by the national curriculum. Moderators will want to look at drafts
and plans as part of their scrutiny. This would include responses to peer
assessment or teacher comment where these are not overly directive. A comment
about rethinking the adjectives used or checking punctuation, for example, are
perfectly acceptable and do not interfere with independence. A direct comment
about, for example, changing a particular word, is not acceptable. Proof
reading for the child is also not acceptable.
The
‘prompt don’t proof’ guidance about marking is worth adhering to.
My
response
On the basis of the STA guidance and that issued by
ourselves after attending the STA briefing on the exemplification materials and
frameworks, we would think that the answer to questions 1,2 and 4, is a
definite and unequivocal yes.
Question 3 may depend on whether these sentences then
appear in children’s work. However, as
we indicate below, and is clear in STA requirements, writing for the purpose of
assessment is not required. If it is good practice to share examples and model
for pupils when teaching children how to write – and we believe it is – then
this is permissible. If you are teaching writing in science and asking pupils
to complete a report using the agentless passive then exemplification is
extremely useful. Dictating the sentences is not and it would probably be best
to have modelled the passive in an unrelated piece of writing.
Question 5 may be tricky. It is good practice for teachers to
prompt pupils to rethink a word, though it would probably be better if the
pupils put the squiggly line underneath a word they were uncertain of
themselves. The teacher is not correcting but prompting. This seems just about acceptable
in the definition of independence. It does not quite reach the extent of a
Microsoft spellchecker but I think it comes close.
Question 6 seems similar to question 5 – a prompt to seek
and correct so probably acceptable and not quite so targeted at the particular
error as the practice in q5.
Question 7 is part of peer assessment but I wonder if the
assistance given from peers acting as unqualified teachers, and possibly just
telling them the spelling, would be supportive of independence. I don’t think
it would mean rejecting the work as overly scaffolded but I wonder if it allows
the spelling box to be ticked?
Question 8 may seem like a no on the face of it and I added
question 11 to broaden it a little. A general reference to the assessment
criteria which requires writing to have grammatical features such as
semi-colons if it is to be judged as good, seems fine. Pupils need to know
which hoops to jump through. The advice is to put a semi-colon sentence in to
please the examiner and being able to do this appropriately and correctly is
what should be judged so my answer is: yes, this is still independent and I would advise schools to do what is
suggested in question 11.
Question 9 is again borderline but is prompting rather than
proofing or over directing thus is probably acceptable practice, although it
should lead over time to pupils asking themselves these questions.
Question 10 is a bit confused and mixes the validity of
feedback with the number of drafts done. Verbal feedback in general terms or
which points to success criteria seems fine. 5 drafts may seem too many, but
does the number of drafts actually matter if it is the child trying to get it
right ? Moderators might ask for more detail about the feedback given and would
hope that later pieces of work show the child being able to step back and
evaluate prior to a final draft without recourse to peers or adults. How many
times would you draft a letter of application for an important job?
Questions 11 and 12 are
yeses.
Other
questions.
What is the purpose of independent writing? Is it to
provide material for assessment, thus making every writing session a test? Is
it the application of what has been taught and learned? Is it part of the
learning process? The writing that is
being assessed is also evidence of
having learned the science geography, history or whatever and how to write
within the constraints of that subject.
What do real writers (i.e. grown-ups) do when writing? Should
children not be doing this?
NB the national curriculum emphasises that the drafting and
proof-reading process needs teaching (It
is essential that teaching develops pupils’ competence in these two dimensions
-transcription and composition-. In addition, pupils should be taught how to
plan, revise and evaluate their writing.
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