A few years ago, after facilitating a session on assessment in the 21st-century classroom, I was approached by one of the workshop participants and asked what initially prompted me to start reconfiguring my classroom practice and my approach to classroom assessment. I said: “I asked myself a few basic questions: What do I want my students to be now and when they’re older? What skills do I want them to have? Who do I want them to be as human beings?”
Read MoreA few years ago, I ran into an old colleague of mine at an educational conference. He was using the lunch break to catch up on his marking. His backpack, placed on the chair beside him, was full of what looked like 2- or 3-page compositions. “Don’t you need a quiet place to focus to mark these?” I asked.
Read MoreIn my last post, I wrote about the value of Assessment for Learning as an approach to supporting and engaging students. Whenever we talk about Assessment for Learning, we must also address its key element — timely, effective, and meaningful feedback. Let me take you back in time once again to when I was a young English teacher, facing a loaded curriculum and a semester that, in my view at least, seemed very very short. I had a lot to cover and not much time. Back then, feedback in my mind looked like this:
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