Closing the Gap - Reviewing my progress this year

At the start of the year I aimed to develop my students ability to close the gap between the work they were producing and their potential. In a post entitled 'Developing Efficient Feedback Techniques' I set out my aim:

Firstly, I think it's important to say that none of the principles I am discussing here are new to my practise. All of the things I have done before. What I am really talking about here is ways of systematising what I do to make sure that as many students as possible can successfully close the gap between where they are and where they want to be.

The key point was to systematise the process so that all of my students were able to make real progress. I had felt that, because of their relative importance, my GCSE and A-Level classes were receiving better quality feedback than my other groups. I believed that if I could make my GCSE/A-Level classes close the gap efficiently and effectively then I could filter this down to my lower school teaching and make improvements across the board.

In December I asked my GCSE and A-Level students to complete a GoogleForm anonymously giving their views about the new assessment books (These are exercise books that only contain assessed work, feedback and improvements. The first pages are taken up with the targets and grades which are suigned by the students parents). Using this 'Student Feedback on my Feedback' I was able to ascertain that the assessment books were a big success. One student wrote:

"I like completing my AS work in the book as it allows me to keep it all in one place and easily look back on past questions / essays. It's also good for teacher feedback and discussions with parents over how certain tasks have gone."

Since my December blog post I have looked to develop my use of DIRT to improve my students exam performance. I focused on Personalising DIRT using ExplainEverything videos. This allowed the students to get the most out of the limited time directly before the exam.


Results and Impact

1. I have decided to use assessment books throughout my teaching from next year. From year 7-13 all students will have books that just contain assessed work, feedback and improvements. To add to this my Head of Department has also decided to implement these assessment books across the department. This has shown the value of the idea as all history students @Rossett will have these assessment books from September.
2. At the start of the year I vowed that every time I marked a piece of students work I would make the students improve it. I have been able to stick to this for the most part with year 7 and 8 but the new assessment books will make this easier and ultimately more efficient.
3. During the Spring Term there was a whole school marking scrutiny to see if books were being marked effectively. One of my year 8 classes books were scrutinised and they were found to be effectively marked showing that the students had been able to take feedback on board and act on it. Without making the decision to always make students act on my feedback I don't think that this marking scrutiny would have been as successful. I was particularly pleased that these were year 8 books as it proved that I am lifting the standard of feedback across the board.
4. I felt that during the intense period that preceded the exams that the work I had completed throughout the year on improving exam answers really paid dividends. The students were able to quickly work on improving answers with limited guidance from me. This was very valuable in the final lessons before the exam.

Going Forward

1. Obviously, I will look to use the assessment book model throughout my teaching from next year. With the lower school I will use it for most marked work and not just assessments as it is good for the students to get used to the idea of improving their work. It also will allow me to stick to the principle of only marking work if the students are going to improve it.
2. From the student feedback I feel that I still need to develop and improve the amount of written praise that I give. I am looking to perhaps use 'Two Stars and a Wish' which will allow me to make sure I include more 'stars' in my marking. This will continue to be a challenge for me as when I am under pressure with time I naturally default into focusing on how students need to improve their work.
3. This work links well with our new whole school focus on DIRT. As a faculty we are going to be using purple pens for feedback and green pens for the students improvements. These colour will work well with my assessment books and make the different parts of them visibly different.

I feel that my work this year has been successful. I will only truly know when the results come in but I do feel from observations, book scrutinies, and working with the students that what I have tried to do has had an impact. I will now have to think about how to develop this for the coming academic year.