right2learn Assessment Process

Tried and tested approach

  

The right2learn service comprises online assessment for learning in Maths, English, Science and ICT for Primary School children, which has now been used by parents at home and many schools across the country since 2003. Assessments are delivered within units, matched to the national curriculum areas in the core subjects for KS1 and KS2, as follows:

• Primary Framework Maths - Termly structure, e.g. units A1 to E1 in Autumn

• Numeracy Strategy - unit and strand based, with 4 assessments per term  

• Primary Framework Literacy - Mixture of Narrative, Non Fiction and Poetry units per term

• Literacy Strategy - Word, Sentence and Text units for each term

• QCA Science - each unit from Scheme of Work for years 1 to 6

• Kent Science - each unit from Scheme of Work for KS2 (KS1 by December 2009)

• ICT - KS2 matched to ICT @ KS2 

Stimulating children

  

The online assessment service boosts children's confidence via visually stimulating questions and answers, which are delivered in Flash with images and audio, making them more inclusive and preventing the need for an adult to read them out. The questions are automatically marked, providing children with immediate feedback and explanations. These can be used by a parent, teacher or teaching assistant to develop the child's understanding, and include a further question, relating to the same learning objective, for extension and consolidation of learning.

  

How to deliver assessments

  

The assessment process starts when the teacher "enables" the required assessment for an individual or group of children via the click of a button. The assessment is then delivered to each child via a pc, logging in with his or her own password. Assessments run on timers and take on average 15 minutes to complete. Children may use bespoke templates to write notes and show evidence of understanding.

Teachers can also deliver assessments via an interactive whiteboard to the whole class or a select group of children at once, capturing their working out on bespoke templates. This approach is particularly useful with younger year groups, or when the teacher wishes to quickly capture a snapshot of children's attainment and understanding prior to beginning a unit of work. Answers are fed into the system and automatically marked, providing the same analysis outcomes for teachers and direct feedback and learning process for children.

  

When to deliver assessments

  

Teachers have a variety of options for the timing of assessment delivery. Typically, they may deliver the relevant unit based assessment prior to beginning a relevant Maths or Literacy unit from the Primary Framework or Primary Strategy, QCA or Kent Science unit or ICT, in order to inform teaching.

Alternatively, teachers may deliver the relevant assessment upon completion of the unit, in order to confirm learning and identify areas to be addressed further. Assessments can be delivered more than once, and many teachers choose to use both methods.

A further option is to deliver several assessments at the end of a period of time, for example assessment units A1 to E1 from the Primary Framework Maths may be delivered in assessment week at the end of the Autumn term.

Teachers also have the option to set specific assessments and the review of their results as targeted homework, particularly in Maths and English, to involve and inform parents.

  

Tailoring assessments to the needs of different groups of children

  

The admin and set up of school accounts are dealt with by right2learn. This includes creating class lists and editing usernames and passwords for each child, to make the log in process simple and straight forward. Teachers are able to create further interest groups, e.g. SEN and Gifted and Talented, to facilitate the delivery of differentiated assessments to children according to their progress and needs, and contributing towards planning for personalised learning. Further interest groups may also be created for analysis purposes, for example to compare girl/boy assessment outcomes.

  

Analysing assessment results

  

All results are immediate and are automatically displayed in the teacher's account, showing evidence of attainment of national curriculum learning objectives, to enable the specific needs of each child to be identified and addressed. The automated marking and reports include a gap analysis to facilitate lesson planning in the core subjects.  

The automated reports for each assessment also include Sub Level and Average Point Scores indicators within the teacher account. These are automatically averaged over each term, and reported over several years, facilitating the immediate indicator of Sub Levels for each subject and the ongoing progress measurement in Maths, Literacy, Science and ICT, to confirm value added.

  

Assessing Pupil Progress

  

Read details here of how the right2learn service is being matched to the APP Assessment Focuses, to support teacher judgements>>