Assessment for Learning (AfL): Day-to-day assessment

Involving children in their learning

Children need to be proactive partners in the learning process. They need to be taught how to take responsibility for the progress they make as independent learners able to work effectively with the teacher and with each other.

To do this, children need to feel that they are in a safe environment where they belong, that their opinions are valued, and that there is a clear structure to their role in assessing their own learning.

We need to help children judge how well they are doing. This requires a shared understanding of:

• what children will learn
• what they will be able to do after they have learned it
• why they are learning - the big picture (sometimes a curricular target)
• when they will get opportunities to use and apply the learning (how their learning fits with other curricular areas or their lives outside school)
• how to judge the quality of the outcome using success criteria (which clarify standards and small steps of progression in key concepts and skills)
• what 'good' and 'even better' looks like, and how to evaluate how well they have done and what they could do even better.

Helping children to be involved in their learning

• Share the learning objectives with them, using language they understand, and make links with prior learning. The curricular learning objectives may be supplemented with language learning objectives.
• Discuss with the whole class and with groups what they will be able to do as a result of their learning.
• Clarify standards through explaining, modelling or providing examples of good work using understandable success criteria to help them judge quality.
• Refer to the criteria throughout the teaching sequence, using teacher feedback, questioning and whole-class, group and paired discussions.
• Review progress and achievement together, throughout and at the end of a teaching sequence.
• Encourage children to identify for themselves when they have met success criteria.

Helping children with specific difficulties to be involved in their learning

It is important to ensure that all children can be involved in their own learning.

Without the appropriate opportunities to demonstrate independence, some children with special educational needs become passive learners and can develop 'learned helplessness', not feeling able to take responsibility for their own learning.

All children can be genuine partners in the learning process if the adults who work with them encourage the development of independence and responsibility, not reliance on adult help.