Now that exam pressures are easing, we like many schools are looking forward to next year, trying to learn from our mistakes of this year and put things in place to improve. This year marks some big changes the new curriculum and assessing without levels probably being the biggest. At a meeting last week we started discussing assessing without levels and how we might go about it in the PE faculty area in conjunction with the creative arts faculty area. We are only at the stage of putting ideas down at the moment, so don’t expect to see perfect finished articles yet. From some of the ideas I have played around with throughout the year and in discussion with other members of my faculty I have produced five different ideas. There is one running theme throughout the five ideas I have produced and that is the areas they are looking at. I have come up with core areas that I believe should be assessed in this new curriculum. I did this with some help from this document titled National Curriculum: Physical Education – Analysis Across the Key Stages on the AfPE website. I came up with the following core areas:
- Technique
- Using Skills & Tactics
- Analysis & Evaluation
- Problem Solving
- Health & Fitness
- Challenge
- Preparation for Life & Participation
No doubt if we decide to run with these they will be tweaked and adapted once we sit down as a faculty and look at these carefully, but they are a starting point. There is a pdf link showing the five ideas at the end in one document.
The first idea I came up with was to use to concept of Solo Taxonomy as a way to assess students and also to make it very clear what a student needs to improve on.
The next idea is one based upon something that has been spoken about as a possibility of whole school assessment, bronze, silver, gold, platinum. I personally am not a fan of this as I feel it is too narrow.
There has been talk more recently of this being used in the format of a student will be gold if they are achieving as they are expected to and platinum if they are exceeding expectations. This seems a little better, but still requires some form of data behind it to show what a student should be achieving, so it has its flaws, I feel this could be used nicely alongside an assessment model.
The third idea is my favoured idea, which shows the assessment as a process, with no levels given to the student, they just see they are currently in box X and to get to the next box they need to do Y. Since quickly drawing this up, I have had the idea that a pathway may be a clearer way of presenting it.
This fourth idea was put forward by a member of my faculty. In our school we currently have our levels attached to colours, this idea related around using the colours instead of numbers. I personally do not believe this is the answer because it is just calling levels something different.
Finally there was a suggestion by my head of faculty on using the GCSE practical grading criteria within Key Stage 3. This is something that is already set up and would not take a lot of effort to put into place, in addition to ensuring the pupils are familiar with it when they come to take GCSE PE. Although I do not believe it meets the aims of the DfE for removing levels.
It would be great to see what some other people out there are doing and ideas that are being bounced around for assessing without levels, both within PE and whole school. As I mentioned we are only at the beginning of this process, but I would welcome any feedback.
Miss Wards Blog 