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Sean Harford, National Director, Education, at Ofsted, set out what schools need to demonstrate in terms of assessment. Above all, his message was “inspectors are looking to see that a school’s assessment system supports the pupils’ journeys through the curriculum”.
With Sean Harford’s message in mind, let’s take a look at the common misconception methods and how the report on EducationCity can help address teaching challenges.
Before this though, check out the How to Use Data Visualisation pack, which explores how the report can help identify learning gaps to address any misconceptions that have occurred. Simply click the button to download!
What is a misconception?
A misconception is a view or opinion that is perceived inaccurately due to misunderstanding. In a school environment, you may come across this challenge if students are struggling to grasp ideas or concepts during a lesson.
With a mix of different abilities, all children learn at their own pace and may be stronger in certain subjects or perform better during assessments. To help them fully understand the underlying concepts, there are steps that can be put in place to measure growth.
Addressing misconceptions
Instructive support can be used to support students in mastering a new area of a topic or help learners from falling behind. This type of strategy is called scaffolding and examples include technological tools and grouping mixed-ability students based on their knowledge, to support one another.
Effective feedback from yourself or peers guarantees that students who are mastering new skills have opportunities to try these out with immediate feedback and encouragement. Guidance will help boost confidence in their abilities, enabling them to grow and progress further in their learning.
A relatable lesson could involve setting up a student ‘talk-through’ activity once they have successfully learnt a skill. Encourage students to talk through the activity, e.g., the steps they are taking and how they plan to solve the problem they have come across. This will make students feel confident, but also help address any gaps in learning, so you can see where you may need to step in and support learners.
Discovered how misconceptions can be solved? Now how can the Assessment Report help?
Once you’ve discovered the areas of the topic that have been misunderstood using the data gathered from the assessment, you can start to action insights you notice to help improve attainment and personalise your lessons to build students’ understanding.
As Sean Harford explains, “the key reason for all assessment is to ensure that teaching and learning are working well and that children are benefiting from a deep and rich education”.
It’s not about the type of system schools use, it’s about how assessment is used to enhance progress, deepen knowledge, promote understanding and develop skills.
Not only is it important that you get an insight into students’ progress, it’s also handy for them to track their learning progress too. How can this be achieved? Well, following an assessment taken on EducationCity, a Revision Journal is automatically generated if the student scores less than 100%. The journal contains resources to offer additional support to build knowledge, whilst enabling students to keep track of their scores as the content is automatically marked, saving you valuable time marking!
The example below has been taken from a report pulled after an assessment was taken. You can see one student, Alanna, answered a number sentence question incorrectly. Her peers, Alex and Amelia, answered this question correctly, so this could be a great opportunity for setting up group work to help Alanna fill this learning gap on number sequences.
There are a number of ways misconceptions can be addressed using the data from EducationCity’s Assessment Report. Simply sign in to explore the Assessment Report for yourself. If your school doesn’t have EducationCity, sign up for a free trial here.
*The Assessment Report is currently only available for schools in England.