Little Heath Primary School

POLICY FOR RESPONDING TO CHILDREN’S LEARNING

Introduction

This document is a statement of the aims, principles and strategies for responding to children’s learning at Little Heath Primary School.

The policy will be reviewed regularly and revised when necessary.

Philosophy Statement

Responding to children’s learning is an important part of teacher assessment. It is important to respond to children’s work, to enable teachers and learners to be aware of what and how they are learning, to acknowledge what they need to do to improve and to celebrate their achievements and successes. Children’s learning is aided if practice is consistent between staff and across subjects.

Aims

Our aims when responding are to:-

  • provide clear feedback to children about strengths and areas for development in their learning,
  • recognise, encourage and celebrate children’s effort and progress,
  • focus on those areas of learning where groups or individuals need specific help,
  • provide a record of children’s progress,
  • enable pupils to refer back to their own achievement,
  • provide motivation for individual improvement.

Response to written work

The school uses Assessment for Learning (AfL) as the basis of assessment in all key stages. In Key Stage 1 responding to work and feedback on the learning intention will predominantly take place orally and written comments are often not required. Written feedback is more likely to take place at Key Stage 2, but feedback will also be given orally. Children should be made aware of the different styles of presentation: i.e. drafting standard and revisited standard.

  • Feedback should be carried out promptly (mini plenaries are good for this), and workcommented on if appropriate.
  • Comments on the children’s work, if used:

should relate to the learning objective/success criteria.

may occasionally need to be made about other aspects of the learning.

should be positive and recognise the child’s achievements.

shouldencourage reflection of the learning objective, to develop and extend thinking.

need to be legible and should be written in pen using a colour that contrasts with the ink used in the work.

  • Time needs to be built into lessons for children to reflect on self, peer and teacher evaluation and to respond to it –this may be done orally.
  • Where there are many spelling errors only a few of the most common ones should be pointed out.

For pieces of work across the curriculum where it is not necessary to have a written comment we do the following:

  • A reddot indicates a dialogue is required with the teacher – the teacher will date and sign the work once the learning conversation has taken place
  • An amber dotaccompanied by a teacher comment indicates some of the LO has been reached
  • ‘LO’in a circle with a tick through indicates the LO has been reached.

Monitoring of written responses

To ensure continuity of marking across the school and within Key Stages, there are a number of procedures in place.

  1. Sharing of marking procedures and levelling of written work in teaching staff meetings.
  2. Discussion of marking at Key Stage meetings.
  3. Collection of books and folders by the Headteacher, Senior Management Team and coordinators, for scrutiny of progression and marking.

In both key stages, on extended pieces of writing, coloured pens are used to identify

  • where objectives/success criteria have been met - green
  • where something needs to be improved – amber

Where the children have self or peer marked their work the teachers’ comments,if they are made,should be focused on the quality of the children’s own evaluation.

Responding to non-written work

  • Teachers take care to respond to positive behaviour, achievement, effort and work ethic, in order to build self-esteem in individuals and a good learning culture across the school.
  • Teachers use questioning to find out what children already understand and to move their learning forward.
  • Areas for development are pointed out in a constructive way.
  • Praise of the learning is used for successes.

Mark code for English

RESPONSES TO THE CHILDREN’S WORK MUST BE MADE BEFORE THE NEXT SESSION

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Little Heath Primary School Responding to Children’s WorkMay 2014