It feels like it's something that we should do, that we
should know and we should understand.
But. Do they give their definition or
are we saying it's any active assessment that is then acted
upon and makes a change in the in the learners?
Is that are we putting, are we putting this together based on
the paper or do they articulate in a certain way?
You can end up spending a lot of time digging deeper into an idea
and really involving lots of students and having rich
discussion and, you know, really unearthing that concept.
And then it's the end of the lesson type of thing.
And and you know, you haven't actually completed that exercise
or whatever was, was. So I again, I do see this and I
think I'm also, I've certainly been guilty of it.
If somebody's got the right answer, I'll just take that
right answer and I'll just move on to the next thing.
And we've got to remember that it's not about sort of, are they
correct? It's about what are they
thinking underneath that? Welcome to thank you to be with
primary education. The podcast that makes time is
basically with pedagogy, teaching and learning
professional development. Anything of interest of time per
but enthusiasm as primary teachers.
This week I'm joined by Stewart Welsh.
Good afternoon Kieran, good to be back.
How are you? Yeah, very well shared.
Very good. You can see him in the sunnier
climbs for the moment, although the southeast thing is pretty
sunny as well. How about yourself?
How you doing? Yes, not bad at all.
Just finished a busy day at school and looking forward to
having a bit of a blather with you on this on this episode.
Been a while since we've had a blather.
I've been Belfast in, in research at Guernsey, which was
fantastic. Shout out to the team in
Guernsey if they're listening. And then straight over to the
the cost of Del Sol. It's a it's a hard life, isn't
it, you know? Yeah, I hope you're not looking
for any sympathy here. The best I've managed is is
Elgin. That's been the furthest I've
travelled. So jet set lifestyle for you.
Kieran, are you heading home? Yeah, yeah, head on Friday and
then by the time this episode goes out, I will be knee deep in
a nine year old's birthday party.
So then the sympathy can come. So Saturday morning, if you
listen to this, you know, prayer for Kieran, we're going to
explore formative assessment. End of last year there was a
meta analysis, almost a summary paper on the use of formative
assessments, the ills and the the benefits for those who are
interested in following along. It's by Maskos, Schultz, Xwez
and Ricozi and it's formative assessment of mathematics
education, a systematic review. Stewart, what is the premise of
this paper? Great, Kieran.
So, you know, formative assessment never, it really
seems to go away, but I think that a lot of people involved in
education, if you were to try and pin them down to a
definition, might give you a slightly different response.
It feels like it's something that we should do, that we
should know and we should understand.
But I think this paper has done a useful thing for us because
it's really tried to to dig into, you know, going beyond the
claim that formative assessment is good, it works and you should
do it. And it's tried to sort of
interrogate, you know, what different types of formative
assessment might look like and what is more effective and what
is perhaps less effective, you know, and, and it, it does help
focus our sort of definition of, of formative assessment.
You know, there's a lot of techniques that, you know,
teachers have been exposed to and are continuing to be exposed
to. But I think this paper is a
chance for us to to pause and really look at, you know, the
the efficacy of those techniques and if there are little tweaks
and adjustments to our practice that can actually make those
techniques a bit more impactful. I think it's reasonably subtle,
but it goes after some you have some big claims at the start.
I was good will I am and black from the late 90s and then Hadi
obviously from the early thousands and the you know, so
the the I suppose the talk of effect sizes as mathematicians,
we're not 100% certain whether or not we put much stock in
them, but you know, they're they're not rude, but they're
saying there are big claims. We have our form of assessment.
This paper has been designed to really to do what a good man and
I should do and to bring light where perhaps there's a perhaps
there is none or, you know, assumptions perhaps are made
over an extended period of time. So I think really timely, you
know, because this is one of the reportedly one of the most
impactful things we can do in the classroom.
So, you know, as soon as I saw the title, I said, yes, I have
to to read this. What did they actually do?
What was the What was the paper structured?
Well, you know, as you see there, it's a meta analysis.
So we're, we're looking at existing studies and I think
there's 45 AM I right papers or studies that were looked at
really to try and gauge that the effectiveness of the of the
formative assessment technique that's been employed.
There was a range of techniques looked at, you know, including
sort of classroom based, paper based, digital based, and then
sort of a discussion and a decision around, you know, where
these techniques were actually having an impact on student
progress or student learning or attainment.
We started with what 550 ish papers and then as they as they
did their qualification process, they got down to to what almost
10% of the of the original thing.
But then I suppose that's what these really good method also
does, is it really clearly defines what it's what it's
studying and and so no surprises there, but it was the bulk of
what we're going to look at as well.
What does this then mean? So what were the key takeaways
that you find from this paper? Maybe if we take one take away
at a time. Yeah.
I think it's important that we have a sort of clear working
definition of formative assessment.
And that paper helped because I think that we need to know
formative assessment is more than just about checking what
they know. You know, it might well be that,
you know, that's a huge part of what we do in our, our work in
the classroom, trying to check whether they know what they
understand. But for any action like that to
be truly formative, it needs to help us plan our next step or
our next action. It needs to be about decision
making. And so that paper, one of the
big takeaways for me is really just to to keep that in mind
that whenever we're employing some sort of formative
assessment, you know, approach or strategy, it isn't really
complete until you've used the responses that you've gathered
to make a decision to plan your next step and to take that next
step. And actually it then, you know,
links to that idea of sort of planning, assessing, teaching
being a bit of a sort of cyclic thing.
And so, you know, you're always really planning, even in the act
of teaching, you should be sort of planning your next step.
And you're actually always really assessing as well because
every interaction you have with a a student or a group of
students should really be informing your next decision.
And so you've got this planning, teaching, assessing, wonderful
sort of, you know, 33 balls being juggled at the same time.
It's not just, you know, about giving an exit ticket or holding
up a mini whiteboard. It's about defining what we're
supposed to be learning. It's about thinking, you know,
so close as the student to being able to do this thing just now.
And then what will it take to get them to that point?
And you know, obviously we're not saying try harder or do more
examples. We need to be much more
specific. So I think that's the first take
away is just that kind of really sort of clear idea that
formative assessment is not just techniques, it's a decision
making process and it is only kind of complete when there's an
action that results. I mean, would that align with
with your thinking around formative assessment?
Yeah. 100% I mean, I think back then I interviewed Richard
Selfridge about the effective use of data because data is used
so poorly in education and particularly primary education
has all supposed to cross both all phases.
And he said, you know, it's, it's what you do with the data
that's important, you know, and that's so really all you should
be doing is collecting data that you could use.
So I'm 100% of all that definition.
But what I'm possibly struggling to understand, and this might be
bubble is whether or not there's actually a situation where
people don't use that information to act on.
Is it is it a case of are they conflating somewhat of
informative assessment? Are they just failing to act on
it? I mean, if you imagine your
colleagues complete high school, can you you think, is there
anyone who's actually going through their lessons without
being that responsive? Am I just being?
Am I blinded by the with the curse of knowledge or whatever?
If I look at all the schools and classrooms that I've been
fortunate enough to to visit, you know that it's a, it's a
scale, isn't it? It's a scale of formative
assessment techniques, whether that teacher has knowledge, has
a repertoire of techniques, and then are they using those
techniques. And then again, there's a scale
of how effectively are they then incorporating into their
decision making, as I said, what they're seeing in front of them.
And so, you know, I think the brutal answer is that there are
lots of wasted opportunities in classrooms all over the world, I
suppose, for teachers to get more knowledge in and to make
better decisions. You know, many whiteboards is,
you know, show me boards is such a classic example because
teachers now seem to know I should be using these things and
actually I'm maybe got a nice routine now to use them with the
class. But the biggest kind of
advantage of those is US absorbing what we see,
distilling down those results and making a decision.
It's the same with exit tickets. You know, I think that teachers
know these are a useful thing and they give them out, but if
they're not acted upon, then we're not getting the full kind
of impact. So it doesn't become formative.
So I think that there probably are lots of opportunities for
all of us, including myself to, you know, get a little bit more
out of these assessment opportunities.
When we do our PD, we normally start with some sort of
responsive teaching. You know, there's almost like
those routines for or checking for understanding and acting on
and stuff are the use of worked examples.
Like I was doing that with Saint Peters.
Virtually all those. Saint Peters is a school that
has been utilized tastes like a champion for a long time and so
don't necessarily need us in depth because, you know, those
systems are in place, right. So, yeah, so maybe maybe it's
because my recent work almost goes like we're maybe many years
down the line in terms of their journey and stuff.
And because yeah, because it's definitely a refinement and or
we can be we can be so much more efficient in our in our
assessment. But so maybe I've sort of not
been paying attention recently to, to the fact that that can
sometimes be absent or maybe there's less, it's less
efficient and and therefore, like you said, missed
opportunities. That makes a whole lot of sense.
I'm going to just add that the realities of the classroom are
such that, you know, teachers feel that there is some pressure
to to move on and to maintain a pace.
And so questioning, which is, you know, essentially the core
of all of our assessment is something that, you know, you
can you can end up spending a lot of time digging deeper into
an idea and really involving lots of students and having rich
discussion and, you know, really unearthing that concept.
And then it's the end of the lesson type of thing.
And, you know, you haven't actually completed that exercise
or whatever was was set. And so again, I do see this and
I think I'm also, I've certainly been guilty of it.
If somebody's got the right answer, I'll just take that
right answer and I'll just move on to the next thing.
And we've got to remember that it's not about sort of, are they
correct? It's about what are they
thinking underneath that? Whenever we look at the
classroom, what we want opportunity, we want all
children thinking all the time, don't we?
And then, you know, we want this definition, I think probably
makes sense, you know, before we transition.
Do do they give their definition or are we saying it's any active
assessment that is then acted upon and makes a change in the
in the learners? Is that are we putting, are we
putting this together based on the paper or do they articulate
in a certain way? I am probably packaging this up
into my own definition of formative assessment, but it
aligns with what's going on in the paper and it also aligns
with the more effective formative assessment because the
the paper goes on to talk about those actions.
So it's it's it's a process, not just a technique, something that
results in decision making. So I think that we are probably
creating our own kind of mutant version of the definition, but
that aligns with, you know, effective formative assessment
rather than just asking questions and getting answers
and doing nothing. I think, yeah, because what
we're basically going to have is, is like five ways to get the
most informative assessment kind of thing as the as the
structure. And So what what's, what's the
second sort of take away that you've taken from this?
Yeah. And I kind of started to, to
touch on it there. It's not about asking more
questions really. It's it's also not about
gathering more data. You know, there's a lot of
information going around in schools already.
I don't think we need to gather more.
I think it's about making better use of it.
And really, when I talk about making better use of it, I'm
talking about improving our planning so that the largest
number of, of pupils can move forward.
You know, you mentioned there that we want to have all
people's thinking all the time. I would add that we want to have
all people's thinking hard all the time.
But even on top of that, I would like that teachers are better
aware of what those pupils are thinking.
And, and that is difficult when you've got a room of 30 and you
want to try and get a sense of what they're all thinking.
And that's why the questioning. This is the second take away
like the questioning whether it's a task or an activity or
whatever it is, we want to design these carefully so that
they illicit mathematical thought rather than just right
answers and wrong answers and pupils and and parents and
actually teachers, they like nothing more than a big page of
correct answers. Everything texts looking lovely
10 out of 10. But if we're not really, you
know, asking questions or digging below the surface to try
and associate elicit that sort of mathematical thinking, then
we're maybe not equipping ourselves with enough
information to make the right decisions about what comes next.
And, you know, there's a whole host of things that we could do
next depending on on what we're told and what those what those
students tell us. So yeah, we want all people's
thinking. We want them all thinking hard,
if possible, about something that they can actually achieve.
But also we want teachers to know that they're thinking, you
know, how do you know pupils are thinking and how do you know
what they're thinking? You know, that's where those
formative assessment techniques, like you mentioned teach like a
champion there. I've talked about showing me
boards already, Hinge questions, exit tickets, all of those
things. You know, if we are asking
questions and, and creating tasks that go below the surface
and, and get into the deeper thought, then we're getting much
richer information back. Hence, we will make better
decisions that push the learning forward.
I think, you know, I know some listeners will be just happy
that their their pupils aren't thinking about climbing the
fences. You know, so, and I totally get
what you mean. And, you know, but it's about us
directing people attention. Yeah.
Because, yeah, a lot of the conversation about questioning
can often introduce, like you say, it's not about more.
It's not about overcomplicating it.
But I think as leaders, it's about creating the space where
teachers can do that, that deep thinking themselves, and where
that space isn't available. You're then having to put your
faith in the resources you're utilizing and the thinking that
other people have done. You know, can the questions that
have been written elicit that kind of deep thought, that kind
of rich mathematical thinking? You know, because we know that
lots of people's only ever get a sterile and sort of sanitary
experience of mathematics. And that's because their
teachers probably haven't had the time to do all the wonderful
thinking that they want to do during their planning time.
So probably an appeal to leaders to really make school
improvement a subtractive process.
You know, there's so much bureaucracy we can cut.
But in the absence of that, as a teacher, you're probably
thinking, actually, you know, do I trust the resources?
Am I going for the highest quality sort of thought process
here? You know, people have maybe been
in the situation and and done that, that deep thinking for
you, you know. So yes, I'm totally with you,
you know, and I jest about the deep thing because we do want
all people's thinking as deeply and as as difficulty and I don't
know, hard as possible, but about the mathematics.
And yeah, I completely agree with that as well, because in
some cases you're just glad that the students in the room with
you and that they're engaging with what's going on.
And that's obviously not going to go away.
But while you were talking there, I was thinking that, you
know, some viewers and listeners might be thinking, well, OK, but
how do we, how do we kind of go beyond the surface there?
How do we go a little bit deeper?
It's much easier one to one with students when you're talking to
them, or maybe you're talking to a small group of students
because you can sort of have this much more focused and
controlled conversation. You can, can direct the
narrative and pull their thinking around and set them up
for the, for the big question or the deep question.
But when you've got a full group, then it becomes, you
know, a bit more challenging. So we need to, you know, think
really carefully. And just one, one little thing
that kind of comes to mind is, you know, when you are
introducing a new idea and you're starting to get students
maybe practicing A technique, doing some examples, what often
happens is that you find that you're examples kind of change
and modify and then there'll be one that's different to the
others. And so even just a little small
thing like having those two on the board and say, you know,
let's have a think about these two.
We've already done a lot of this.
Here's a new one. It's similar, but it's
different. What's different?
You know, what do you think's changed here and how is that
going to affect and just get everybody to think about that
for a moment, even if it's a sort of think per share or
however you choose to do it, just little things like that.
Can, you know, take the thinking from superficial to going a
little bit deeper. And the other one that often
works really well in the classroom is, you know, when
somebody gives you a correct answer is to then push it all
back to the room. You know, don't say it's right,
don't say it's wrong, just push it all back and say, well, who
agrees, who disagrees? And again, just takes the
thinking that a little bit deeper and obviously, you know,
uses a few more moments, but moments well spent.
I think just to go that little bit deeper and set that
expectation that you, you know, you're looking for everyone in
the room to think about these things.
Yeah, I actually did the I used dogs, you know, people, some
people use birds, some people use dogs to show like the
boundaries of an idea, the boundaries of the concept and
similar indifference in that stuck a poo wee Chihuahua up on
the board. And I said is this a dog?
And someone said no, it's a rat. So I'm sorry for him, but he had
small dogs and they were really angry.
So he did, you know. So we have the Irish wolfhound
and the Chihuahua and the least dog and the most dog.
But it probably is a rat before cat that it becomes, isn't it?
You know, I have, I have to be honest, I'm not a massive fan of
written feedback. I don't like spending hours with
a pile of jotters or notebooks in front of me, you know,
scribbling down three sort of sentences.
Because largely I know this is not going to get acted upon.
You know, I've looked into feedback before.
That way often students don't actually understand the language
that we're using. When we give feedback, we, we
can often give high level teacher levels or feedback to
students that couldn't answer the thing in the 1st place, it's
unlikely they're going to be able to understand the very
specific language that we're using.
Secondly, they might not actually know what to do anyway
to then try and fix it. So although you might say, you
know, you need to take more care of less that or whatever it is.
They won't know how to actually take that step.
And so, you know, feedback has a place, but I think it has a
whole load of different forms. And so when we're talking about
formative assessment, we're talking about using techniques
to get a sense in, in our heads of what students are thinking
and, and what they're understanding.
But then we do need to take that next step and, and have them,
you know, in fact, we want to try and improve their, their
understanding of their learning. And so, you know, for me, it's
not about more feedback, It's about thinking about different
types of feedback and how can we get the most value from the
feedback. And I think it's always got to
boil back down to the actual mathematical process that's
going on there. Feedback should never be about
the learner. You know, it's not a case of
saying or try harder or, you know, whatever, you're a star.
If you know, positive or negative stuff directed to the
learner is not helping. It needs to be about the maths
and so, you know, I think feedback can be really powerful,
but it should result in an action from this the pupil.
There should be something that they need to do as a as a result
assure somebody much more learner than I.
It sort of said it should result in more work for the recipient
than the giver. And I, I like that.
And you know, I've challenged any listeners or viewers to
think how often has the feedback that you've written into 30
notebooks, you know, taken longer than, you know, the
students have then spent acting upon it.
So it should always be more work for the recipient.
I think that's why I don't do a lot of written feedback.
I would tend to do all class verbal, small group, but
feedback can also be just more examples.
So if you are doing a whole class response using show me
boards or whatever it is and you see that 50% of the room have
not got this, then the feedback is that you then do some more
examples. Maybe simplify it, maybe go for
a different representation, or maybe you get the pupils to work
together and you go around the room and you just listen to what
they're saying. All of those things are kind of
forms of feedback because you're you're giving them another
chance to think about that idea, but you're putting a bit of
structure and control around that so that they are now
focusing more on the specifics. And I think it all ties back to
those kind of clear idea of what it is we're expecting them to
learn in the first instance, the learning intentions, the success
criteria. I'm not a big fan of writing
them on the board, but I think that students need to know what
what a good one looks like and what they're aiming for so that
they've got that kind of target. So I think that's another take
away for me is that it's not a bit more feedback, it's about
thinking about the different ways we can provide feedback.
We can provide, you know, guidance and structure around
next steps, actions, actions that are specifically tied to
that bit of maths that we were learning so that those students
actually improve. That's kind of causing the loop,
isn't it? Or keeping that loop sort of
circulating. How does that sit with you?
What do you think about that? Do you like marking?
Yeah, I love marking. Spent so many weekends missing
on missing events because of it. So when sort of the, the
narrative changed, we almost pulled the knowledge lever.
And so we knew that actually written feedback was not
comparable to feedback and, and those effect sizes, you know,
triple marking wasn't necessarily as effect impactful
as, as we might have thought. And so, but as almost a bit
disappointed that the the Ofsted lever wasn't pulled or certainly
didn't seem like reports were acknowledging that this kind of
marking shouldn't still be happening.
You know, obviously there was the myth busting documents, but
nothing really changed. There were schools when I knew
when people were spending countless hours marking.
We're getting good and above inspection ratings, even though,
you know, I think they should have held leaders accountable
because it was too easy. And it's just gotten worse
because of the regime change. And it's got, you know, it's so
easy just to stick your head in the sand and just say, well,
we've always done this way. So we're not going to, I'm not
going to change this. You know, so I am, I'm
disappointed that really over the last 15-16 years, fewer
schools aren't and aren't it's asking their teachers to do
written feedback as part of some sort of policy.
But I do think of the positives back then, I think it was Dylan
William and I think it was in. But what does this look like in
the classroom? You know, the Carl Hendrick and
Rob McPherson book and I think he had like almost like a circle
and he said like dedicate 25% of your feedback to this, 25% of
your feedback to that. Off top of my head, can't
remember exactly what it was, but I will make sure it's
included in the newsletter that goes out with this episode and
thinking deeply that info on Monday morning because it's
really illustrative. I mean, I think even though say
that some feedback should be written, it's probably the
ticking that you, I know you spent hours even still doing,
even though you don't do written notes to your students, you
still spend a lot of time actually physically marking.
So do you know what to do? So you know, no one's saying you
stop looking at work, but there are more efficient ways and more
impactful ways to do that. I mean, I think off the top
ahead Andrew personal to Stanley Rd.
So I was written some stuff in the past, some really good stuff
about his use of them, almost like live feedback or whole
class feedback and the structures that are in place.
You know, just to say that, yeah, this is something I
thought we would have pulled the lever on completely over the
last 20 years, but we just doesn't seem to go over the
line. I think that might be because
many more schools that we'd like to think are our silos rather
than this hive mind that is evidence informed and research
based. And all of it it does.
The sad sort of reality is that I think that written feedback
into notebooks is something that's obviously very visible,
that's kind of measurable from a sort of school administrative or
school leadership point of view. And so, you know, feedback's
good and useful. We want to make sure every
teacher's doing it. So let's just tell them that
they must put it into the notebooks.
And then every two weeks we'll look at the notebooks and check
that they've written it all in there.
And it just sadly, you know, defeats the whole purpose of a
lot of the things we've already spoken about here, being a
little bit more responsive to the, to the class, giving them
additional examples, all that in the moment stuff that you can do
in the classroom. Thankfully, you know, schools
have moved on from that, you know, and are acknowledging that
variable feedback, you know, is, is, is, is powerful and is
useful. You know, I'm not, I'm
necessarily a massive fan of the variable feedback stamp in the
jotters or the notebooks, but again, you know that, you know,
the reason behind that. I think what's most important is
if, if teachers understand that giving high quality feedback as
a result of the information they've gathered through their
formative assessment, if teachers understand that giving
high quality feedback in whatever form it is will
actually make their lives easier, students will, you know,
make more progress and learning will become smoother, then
teachers will be doing it. It's just a case of, you know,
sharing those techniques, giving teachers support and advice so
that they don't have more work. They just make better use of
the, you know, the time and the opportunities that they have.
Yeah. So it's the tools that they have
making sort of the collation and the the decision making easier
rather than more difficult I think.
So I think the last one for me, which is interesting because we
talked before about kind of digital interventions in another
episode. You know, this, this paper does
spend a little bit of time looking at sort of online and
and digital computer based kind of inventions and interventions.
And it comes back saying that, yeah, the computer based can
actually work pretty well with this off.
You know, the proviso that there is some sort of feedback.
Now feedback can just be right or wrong.
I mean, just telling people if they've got it right or wrong
is, is feedback giving them the correct answer.
Again, more than that. So these computer based sort of
approaches can work well, you know, it's not just because it's
being done online. Give them devices, plug them
into something, get them doing practice.
You know, it's important that we kind of try and get the most out
of that. And so that was a bit of a take
away for me is we're increasingly, you know, getting
access in schools to devices and sort of whole school Wi-Fi
solutions. And there's there's plenty of
sort of platforms that provide practice and things like that.
But what we're hoping here is that it's not just practice for
the sake of practice that there is, you know, this this
opportunity for the students to get a feedback.
And then ideally, you know, there's an opportunity for the
teachers to make even better use of that kind of information that
I was just thinking the other day, you know, imagine if your
class of therapy are are all writing away in their notebooks
and they're answering all these questions.
And, you know, imagine if you had sight of every single answer
that every single student had put in that lesson.
And imagine you were able to remember all that and yesterdays
and the day before. And imagine you were able to
then order that and, and decide where the weaknesses are, where
the strengths are, who needs extended to needs more.
You know, that is that is really powerful.
I think that's where the, you know, the digital stuff can can
be really helpful in this, you know, within this formative
assessment conversation that we're having.
Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, because.
Yeah, because that was definitely something I was going
to ask because it's a thread between last time.
So obviously they were saying things like tablet based
intervention seem to be more impactful.
And you know, I'm almost like a products back on the on the spot
here. We're thinking like if it says
right of your five questions, three of these were wrong, find
them and correct them. You know, that's that's that's
closing that deep thinking like as well, isn't it?
You know, I'm not sure anything actually does that.
But there will be the kind of thing that, you know, supporting
effective teachers because I don't think we're not talking
about it. We're not talking about
artificial intelligence or large language models or anything.
And that, you know, it's basically, you know, expertise
coding technology to do, like you said, the heavy lifting
there, you know, that that's that data analysis that's too
much for the human brain. And but it's not some sort of
random, you know, I'm not sure how to describe them.
But these, these the claims that are being made about the power
of them. Arvis does is, you know, like
it's only been used to people like Dominic talking about how
you actually, let's be a bit restrained in our thinking that
actually you get the, the sensible element of them of that
word. So that's, that's not what we're
talking about. But, you know, technological
effects do appear. Probably most importantly, how
does all of this translate into the classroom?
Are there any things we can do on the ground, you know, to make
sure that we're utilizing formative assessment in the most
effective way possible? Yeah.
I mean, I think that all teachers will be using
assessment techniques in a formative way to some extent.
They may have a a vast range of techniques.
They may have a few kind of go to techniques.
And I think it's, it's not about necessarily being able to, to,
to use every technique. You know, you don't have to have
like a hinge question, ABCD coloured cards for multiple
choice exit tickets, show me boards.
You don't have to have all of that going every lesson that
that's that's really important. It's not about doing sort of
more. I think it's about, you know,
being consistent and using a technique that you know, works
to give you the sort of information you need back.
And so, you know, for teachers in the classroom, I would be
saying that, you know, try and have every lesson 1 purposefully
designed formative assessment activity that's designed such
that it's tied to the mathematical intent of the
lesson that it's going to give you something useful.
So, you know, if it's about adding fractions, for example,
and I think I always default to fractions here, but it's a right
field for errors, you know, because there's concepts in
there, you know, not not just can they add to proper
fractions, but you know, let's let's really dig into the
thinking around the common denominators.
And you know, why have you chosen this common denominator?
Could another common denominator have also worked?
Why would you not choose this one in this case?
What does it mean if you end up using a larger common
denominator in terms of do you have to simplify it and all of
those sort of things? You know, those are the kind of
mathematical thinking and the strategy rather than just can
you do this question? You can't get it right.
So I think takeaways for teachers is try and ensure that
whatever formative assessment technique you're applying, it's
helping you make a decision about your teaching, that you're
just you're teaching then is adapted in some way, whether it
is a different representation, more examples, an easier
example. You split the group, somebody
gets enrichment, you work with a few.
You know, it's not just about doing the technique, which I
think you know, a lot of time for observed lessons and things
like that, people will have all sorts of bells and whistles
going. But really what we're looking
for is, well, what did that tell you and what did you do with
that information? So my big kind of take away and,
and, and thoughts for the classroom is that, you know,
formative assessment, not a technique, but a decision making
process. You know, I would probably add
something else on here because going back and forth with pupils
working together in the classroom, you know, I think
that the teacher is largely the one that's best placed to
provide descriptions, to provide instruction, to provide
explanations, because I've seen students just tell each other
what to do. You know, it's it's rare that
the conversation is restrained and controlled and one is sort
of actively teasing out thought from the other.
Fairly rare. It's usually just a case of,
yeah, you do that number, that number, and then it's it's kind
of done. So I've gone back and forth with
this. But I do think that there there
still is value in having them, you know, work together.
But I think what's important here for again, for teachers is
not to say, OK, class, you've all done, you know, an end of
topic test And, and I'm going to sort of give it back here.
And here's here's the answers on the screen, sort of mark each
other's and then have a chat about it.
You know, I think that's just too vague and too open-ended.
And So what, what I think I'd rather is that you have a very
focused question or prompt maybe on the on the board or on sort
of papers and you know, the students are given some clear
framework around. I want you to discuss this.
This is maybe it's a model answer.
We need to compare it to what a good one looks like.
I want you to both kind of come up with how you would improve
it. Something that you know, really
puts constraints around our conversation, focuses their
conversation because they are, they are useful little tools to
kind of learn from each other, especially if you want to take
half a dozen and have a more focused chat with them while the
rest are having that conversation.
So I think those are two big things there.
Whatever technique you're using, make sure it gives you some info
and act on that info. Doesn't need to be loads of
different techniques. And if you do choose to use kind
of paired work or peer work, then keep it super focused, tie
it to the learning intention, success criteria and make it
about the maths. Yeah, absolutely.
I mean, the only carried out at AD for pupils is almost having a
really tight routine that they know how to stick to that you
can practice and rehearse if they slip out of it because
obviously you know that that kind of collaborative work can
often go awry. And but you know, there's no
reason why I can't work with proper thought.
I think they're, you know, the first suggestion is really
powerful and, you know, because even this week I was working
with a teacher and they were disappointed in the lesson that
they hadn't looked through the plan.
And we've all been there. We've written these really
detailed plans and we thought, oh, this is where we want to get
to. But actually they've been really
responsive and they've decided to adapt their instruction based
on that and say, we're, oh, we're not going to go any
further. We're going to stick with this.
And I was like, that's brilliant.
You know, the I had to reassure them actually, that's the that's
the right thing to do because it doesn't matter what's on your on
your paper, you know, on paper, partial as your man versus
Bayern Munich wasn't going to be a one nil snooze fest, you know,
but it but it was, you know, because you know, you don't
survive first contact with the enemy, do you?
No. I completely agree that that
that is what that's the essence of good teaching is being able
to respond to to read to to digest what you're seeing and
then to respond. And if it means that you don't
get to the end of the page that you hoped you would get to that
day, then there's always next lesson pick up from there.
It's better to to inhaler your instruction to the needs of the
group rather than, you know, drag them kicking and screaming
because of the needs of some arbitrary timeline you know, on
your scheme of work. So I think that almost like the
key thing is like this is not new information.
This is almost like a refinement of what we know about effective
formative assessment. It's almost like a tempering of
expectations and A and a focus of, of attention.
So I think that's really, really useful on on somebody that was
like, you've actually been doing a lot of thinking about this
kind of stuff recently on on like a massive scale.
What have you been working on? I'm, I, I teach in a school, I
work in a classroom. I'm up there and, you know, I
know the challenges and I've often thought, you know, about
digital tools and how they can help us and how they can support
us. And, you know, over the years
and the time I've spent working with teachers all over the world
now I'm trying to think how can we really help them?
How can we make the most of the, of the practice that students
are doing? And, and, and that data that is
gathered, that information and how can we use that to help us
inform so many things, not just our own next steps, but to build
a picture of how you know, well, those students are, are doing
with particular bits of maths and are there groups of students
that needed more support, etcetera.
So I've been, I've been working on a on a tool where if people's
basically complete math questions, they can do it
digitally, they can do it on paper.
If they do it digitally, then that's great because it's
already in the system. If they do it on paper, there's
a very sort of simple way for teachers to just upload those
those answers. And what we're doing there is
we're creating a situation where every question that student
answers forms a tiny little granule in a much, much bigger
picture in terms of their achievement.
So I've, I've built something, it's practice is curriculum
aligned. So although it was originally
kind of aligned for Scottish Curriculum for Excellence, it's
actually now lined up with curriculum for Wales.
And also, of course, you know, our own story of maths
curriculum. So it doesn't really matter
massively what curriculum or scheme you're following.
The practice is going to be aligned to that.
You can do it in any order you want, but it's starting to build
that picture and gather that information.
And I think importantly here, it's not it's not trying to
replace teacher judgement, but what it will do is say, well,
actually, you know, this group of students have had three goals
at this type of question and they've they've struggled with
all of them. So here's half a dozen that you
should maybe spend a bit of time with or it's going to say this
group of students, they've aced these every time.
They've taken no time. They've answered them.
All right. They're looking to maybe be, you
know, achieve a level or, or pushed on to something, you
know, more challenging. But I think what's nice about
this is that it helps the teacher.
It's like a teaching assistant, I suppose, in a sense, just
giving you that info about, you know, where the strengths and
weaknesses are, where you should focus your.
But it also helps the school because all of that stuff can
just be aggregated up to sort of school level.
And as a school, you can say, well, look at that across the
board. We're weak at fractions or, you
know, our, our equations, our expressions and equations are,
are, are not strong in five out of the six classes.
Well, hang on, what's going on in that 6th class?
How come they're getting it right?
Maybe we can, you know, give us a chance for school leaders.
And as you go further up, trust our local authority leaders who
will also see that aggregated up across the whole trust to say,
you know, who can we learn from? You know, not just where are our
weaker areas, but where are our strengths?
And in that way, what we're moving away from is high stakes.
End of topic, end of unit, end of term, end of year tests,
which, you know, they're only snapshots and a lot of those are
performative. It's just performance there.
It's not really learning. But so often we use those as our
kind of, you know, Holy Grail when we make a decision about
how well a student's done. And I think if we're honest with
ourselves, sort of end of topic into term tests, a lot of that
content is forgotten very, very quickly afterwards.
Whereas ASO Pro, which is what I've been working on, it's just
constantly aggregating data together.
It's just building that wonderful big true picture and
then saying to the teacher, these are the things you want to
look at, These are the things you want to go, you know, and
maybe explore next. So I think something really
useful for schools, teachers and, you know, and school
groups. Yeah, it's a trust level and
local authority level stuff that that excites me because you can
see like, you know, how are we doing across the board?
And you know, because like, we started the episode by talking
about my travels this week, but everywhere I go, people have the
same issue. They do these tests 3 * a year.
They haven't either, haven't covered half the material.
The peoples are struggling because it's pitched at a level
that's not relevant to their actual curriculum sequence.
And so there must be a better way.
And I think like everything we do, which is based around how
can teachers become the most effective versions of
themselves, you know, So like, I mean, you said, you know, we've
got something right now. We've got the PD in class, you
know, developmental, not accountable and sort of be
focused coaching and math specific rather than the generic
pedagogy. We've got the story of maths and
the tools to help teachers actually be that really
effective person. And now ESL Pro almost like the
assessment, but assessment on really, really, really well, you
know, I think yeah. And do do you want to have the
point of direction? So it's ASL dot pro.
I'm going to use the phonetic alpha.
So it's ACEL dot POR Nope PRO. That's it, that's it.
ASL dot pro and there are three tours on the site that you can
just click through and get a look at it.
So if you're a teacher, if you're a school leader, if
you're a local authority or trust leader, you can see the
different dashboards, but it's all about it's all about sort of
evidence and action. So this is what the data, you
know, this is the data we've gathered.
Can we trust it first of all, because if it's, if it's thin,
then ASO pro will say, well, don't, don't make big decisions
based on this. The kids haven't done enough
practice. But once the data is, you know,
reliable and we can trust it, then it'll always say, this is
what we think you should look at next.
And you know, for me that that sounds like our formative
assessment conversation. It sounds about it's not about
the techniques, it's not about doing the questions, it's about
a decision making process. I mean, the, the amount that
your coding has developed over the last couple of years is
amazing because like we've always said, like people have
said, oh, well, the story mass can pupils do it?
Can can we have something people facing?
Can the pupils log in? Can we get this data?
And we said no, we weren't going to do it until we knew that we
had a robust. But essentially you built like
this. I'm imagine this like Fort Knox,
but it's like Fort Knox, The Avengers have built where like
no one is penetrating the, the security of this, of this
infrastructure. And you know, we're actually
guarantee this because earlier was talking to us about how
essentially guarantee was a it was a Nazi megastructure and how
they'd poured most of their concrete into the channel
aisles. And this is what I imagine
whenever I imagine ASL Pro, but with none of the negative
competitions of Nazism in the war in World War 2.
Thankfully, yeah, absolutely. It's super secure.
I mean that that is a key thing when you're looking at sort of
data etcetera. So ASL Pro is lean on what it
stores, but it's really, really rich in terms of what it gives
you back. Yeah, yeah, we we could have
taken people data years ago, but actually just we said schools,
No, we can't. And because, you know, it's one
thing to have an adult data, because most of us are adults.
Our data is in the wild and we can deal with that in different
ways. But people data is not fair on
them because in some instance it will be the first time that
their data and their personal data has been somewhere.
So I think really useful episode.
Really looking forward to sharing it with people.
Like I say, I will be, I'll be probably crying in a dark corner
of a room because it's a, it's a sleepover birthday party.
So not only would it last most of the day, but it also last the
whole night, too. And my son says the last time he
went to a sleepover, it was 1:00 AM.
They were still watching the movie.
So pray, really do prayer for me.
Also to say thank you very much for joining me, Stuart.
You're very welcome, Kieran, it's always a pleasure.
And everyone at home, until next time, thanks for listening.