ICT Training for Teachers

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ICT and Secondary Maths - Assessment of the ICT lesson

Module 5 Contents
  1. Introduction
  2. Formative assessment
  3. Summative assessment
  4. Evaluative assessment
  5. Task 5

    Evaluation Sheet

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Introduction
Assessment can be broken down into three parts, all of which have an important role to play:
  • Formative assessment
  • Summative assessment
  • Evaluative assessment

 

Formative assessment
This is the type of assessment which is on-going, verbally during lessons or when work is taken in and marked. Formative assessment should enable pupils to improve their levels of achievement, therefore it can only happen during the unit of work. For formative assessment to be useful there has to be some focus on reaching the objectives, and so the pupils need to know what they are required to do to achieve these. If the unit of work is substantial and spreads over several lessons, it is helpful to have an evaluation sheet showing the criteria required to achieve specific levels for both ICT and mathematics. This can then be used as a prompt sheet for pupils and teachers throughout the lesson. It can also be used for recording the summative assessment.
 
Summative assessment
This is usually recorded at the end of the piece of work. It may be that the work was a substantial project, warranting the recording of National Curriculum levels in both ICT and mathematics on the type of evaluation sheet discussed above. Alternatively the assessment may be of a single lesson and just be recorded in the teacher's mark book. If this is the case it needs to be decided in advance what exactly is going to be recorded. It may be an effort grade, or a level of ICT competency, or a level of mathematical competency. Sometimes the lesson will not warrant a summative assessment, as it may be a part of on-going assessment. The extent to which you carry out summative assessment should be decided in conjunction with your schemes of work for mathematics or perhaps with your schemes of work for cross-curricular ICT: in this case you should liaise with your school's ICT co-ordinator.
 
Evaluative assessment
This type of assessment is a reflection by the teacher on how well the lesson went. The following headings should help you when judging if everything went according to plan:

Classroom management:

This is always the most obvious area to define if things go wrong, and it should also be the easiest to put right! Most of the common problems were covered in the Planning Module. If there are still problems in this area, I would suggest that policies should be developed and supported across the whole school, as a consistent structure will help all staff.

Work ethos

Was there a general feeling that pupils were engaged in their learning? Were they clear about what they were trying to achieve? Was there differentiation taking place within the group, showing that the tasks you set were appropriate? Were pupils with SEN engaged? Were the brighter pupils being challenged?

Learning style

Often the use of a computer can increase the ability of pupils to work independently. They can be thinking about concepts and skills as opposed to merely carrying out tedious and often repetitive tasks. On the down side, pupils can spend all their time typing in data, changing fonts and layout, and not really thinking about the mathematics involved at all. They may be engaged but off task.

ICT skills

Were the pupils' ICT skills adequate for the task? Were they supported adequately and appropriately, so that they could make progress, or did the ICT end up getting in the way? Sometime it is necessary for pupils to spend time improving their ICT skills before they can employ these to make progress in their maths skills: if this is the case then your objectives should be explicit in terms of the ICT skills to be developed.

Did ICT help pupils reach the learning objectives?

There are many aspects to be taken into account when trying to answer this question, the first being that there is likely to be a different answer for different pupils or groups of pupils. This is an interesting point and could lead to some interesting research. If the use of computers in lessons leads to an improvement in punctuality and attendance, what is the significance of this? If pupils with SEN are more confident with their end-product but their actual attainment is not any better than if they had used pencil and paper methods, does that count? If you notice that pupils are more engaged in discussion and can explain what they are doing better, does that also count? There are lots of discussions to be made about what would count as ICT "helping" pupils to learn. The most obvious would be to find a direct link between the ICT used and the levels attained but that is not the only way, and this should be borne in mind.
 

You can explore some of these ideas further in Module 5 of the core, and in the secondary core materials. You may also wish to compare how you feel about your NOF Training with the Teacher Training Agency's Expected Outcomes for the NOF Training.

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Activity

 

Task 5

Choose an activity you have given to a class.

  • Use the attached evaluation sheet to evaluate your lesson.
  • Use your training needs materials to make notes on targets you are likely to meet.
  • E-mail your evaluation to your tutor.
  • Write a description and an evaluation of the lesson for your portfolio.
 
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