Getting started with
Assessment for Learning in English

Introduction

The purpose of this guide is to look in more depth at how Assessment for Learning (AfL) can be used successfully in the subject of English. It builds on Getting started with Assessment for Learning and focuses on some practical AfL strategies for English lessons that you can use and adapt. This guide will also provide an excellent starting point for you to reflect on how you can use AfL successfully in your own classroom practice.

The glossary explains some of the terms used in this guide.

The sections cover:

Learning objectives, success criteria and modelling

Classroom discussions, questioning and dialogic teaching

Verbal feedback, live marking and learner participation

Reflection and next steps

First, watch this video to hear some ideas about why Assessment for Learning is important in English lessons.

Transcript

Success criteria and modelling

“The idea of ‘assessment for learning’ emerged from a realisation that assessment cannot be separated from teaching or instruction.”
Simon Child and Paul Ellis

Success criteria

It is essential that you have a clear understanding of which success criteria learners need to meet to demonstrate progress, and then share these criteria with your learners before a task begins. This will prepare your learners for the knowledge, skills and strategies they will need to complete the task.

Success criteria, learning expectations and learning objectives are all similar in what they are aiming to highlight – that is, what students are learning and how they will show it.

Lesson planning should always focus on the learning that will take place, rather than just the tasks that will be completed. Success criteria might focus on a specific skill or use of language in written tasks. Or it might look at learning behaviours, such as interacting with peers, taking turns, or working together.

Displaying success criteria along with the learning objective, as in the example below, supports and clarifies learning expectations.

You should share success criteria at the start of lessons so that you can support students with their learning during activities, and then use the criteria for formative assessment (with individual students, their peers, a group, or the whole class).

Success criteria can be displayed traditionally like the list above, or like the checklist below, which learners can complete.

Or you can provide learners with images or diagrams that represent what they need to do, like this example of success criteria for learning the layout and features of a formal letter.

A similar teaching strategy can be used for speaking and listening presentations, such as speeches or debates. You can present learners with a clear set of success criteria and guide them to include one technique at a time, like these features of writing an engaging speech.

Providing clear expectations means that learners can keep a record of what they have included in their work and what they still need to demonstrate. Also, learners can approach a task one skill at a time and feel motivated by recognising each separate achievement as their work progresses.

Modelling

It is always important to teach by example, as well as through instruction. Providing a model of what successful work looks like or what the process looks like will help learners make connections to success criteria and so retain knowledge.

There are a variety of ways you can introduce learning objectives and success criteria. But for most tasks, English teachers can provide ‘models’ for learners. This might be by:

producing a piece of work together as a whole class at the start of the lesson;
displaying an example of a piece of work that meets the learning objectives (this can be an excerpt, rather than an entire piece); or
displaying a published piece of writing that demonstrates the learning objective successfully and meets the criteria, such as the following example by Gary Provost, which can be used to show how to use varied sentence lengths in creative writing and how effective it can be.

This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals – sounds that say listen to this; it is important.

From ‘100 ways to improve your writing: Proven professional techniques for writing with style and power’

Gary Provost

You could even make the task fun by asking students to produce triangular paragraphs to demonstrate sentences of different lengths.

As with reading and writing, public-speaking tasks also benefit from modelling through excellent examples, like this video of a teenager winning a televised public-speaking competition.

Learners can watch Duncan’s speech and recognise many of the A FOREST examples above, while also being prompted to consider how he succeeds with his tone of voice, gestures, eye contact, body language and pace.

Learners should see examples of what excellent reading, writing and speaking look like so that, when they carry out a task, they have a shared understanding of what to focus on to improve their own work.

An important aspect of sharing a model piece of writing with students is ‘deconstructing’ the work. This means breaking down the complex process of writing into simple parts that learners can discuss by sharing their knowledge of language and English.

Example work can form the basis for AfL discussions, either in pairs, groups or as a whole class, asking questions such as the following.

These discussions help to prepare learners for how their own work might be deconstructed, either by themselves or someone else. It is also important to share learners’ own work as excellent examples. It can be helpful to share a ‘good’ piece of work produced by a learner and ask other members of the class to give advice on how it can be even better. However, you should only do this with the learner’s permission, and not use the same strategy to demonstrate a poorly produced piece of work, as this will affect the motivation of a struggling learner.

Deconstructing and then evaluating example work prepares learners for how their own work might be scrutinised. This will not only benefit their academic progress but also boost their self-esteem and ability to respond and give feedback. If formative assessment is an everyday practice in the classroom, across a range of work written by the students and their peers, it need not feel too daunting. Also, positive prompts, such as asking what is successful or what is a ‘favourite part’ of a piece of work, create a positive atmosphere for all activities in the classroom, whether they are for the whole class, a group of students, peers, or individuals.

Tiered modelling

Tiered modelling is when the teacher displays several examples of outcomes, ranked in order of success. For example:

a paragraph that has only included very few elements of the success criteria;
a paragraph that has only some of the criteria, so the learners must point out what’s missing;
finally, a paragraph that has met all the criteria mentioned above.

Tiered examples can be provided for all aspects of English – reading, writing and speaking tasks. However, it is important to remember that any form of ranking should use work that has been produced for the lesson or provided by former (unnamed) learners. For speaking tasks, this might be video footage, either of former learners or from other sources.

Let’s consider tiered modelling for a lesson with the learning objective:

To analyse the ways in which writers use language to create tension and atmosphere in gothic writing.

In a lesson like this, learners can begin by analysing the extract provided. In this case, it might be from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Susan Hill’s The Woman in Black or Bram Stoker’s Dracula. You can ask them reflective questions, such as the following.

Which words create tension?
Which words create atmosphere?
What are the connotations of the word you’ve chosen?
Can you spot any creative writing techniques?
Why has the writer used the word …?

Then, you can guide learners in how to understand the success criteria by offering them sentence stems that directly address the learning objectives, as below.

You can give learners examples from former learners or other sources, or ones you have written. This is a useful way to show how a piece of work can progress from one level or grade to the next. The example below ranks the paragraphs as ’satisfactory’, ‘good’ and ’excellent’, but you can adapt tiered levels for relevant levels of achievement. You will see that the examples below require learners to also spot technical errors, sometimes referred to as SPaG: Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation. If this is an additional element of a task, it is important to make clear whether or not the technical errors have any bearing on the final marks. You should consider when and how much criteria to use for any given task.

A satisfactory paragraph

The writer creates tension in this extract. For instance, “It was one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes.” This suggests that it was very late and dark and scary. Also, it shows that the weather was horrible. Also, the sound at the window would make someone jump. This makes the reader feel scared.

A good paragraph

The writer creates tension in this extract by describing the time of night and the miserable weather. For example, in the laboratory, “It was one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes.” This creates a sense that Dr Frankenstein is alone with only the monster because most people would be asleep at this time. Also, we can infer that it is very dark at this time, creating a tense and mysterious atmosphere. The personification of the rain pattering ‘dismally’ creates a miserable and ominous atmosphere. This is very gothic and makes the reader feel unsettled.

An excellent paragraph

The writer creates tension in this extract by using pathetic fallacy. For instance, in the laboratory, “It was one in the morning; the rain pattered dismally against the panes.” This creates a sense that Dr Frankenstein is alone with only the monster because most people would be asleep at this time. Also, we can infer that it is very dark, creating a tense and mysterious atmosphere. Furthermore, the personification of the rain pattering ‘dismally’ creates a miserable and ominous atmosphere. Moreover, the writer deliberately uses the harsh word ‘against’ to give the impression that even the weather is hostile and fighting against him. This foreshadows the way in which the monster turns against his maker. These are all clear features of the gothic genre and make the reader feel unsettled.

You can ask the learners to assess the paragraphs as a whole class or in pairs. Ask them to focus on what the satisfactory paragraph has done well and what it could do better. They can then do the same for the good paragraph, and say why the excellent paragraph is so effective. It is also important to ask learners “What is the difference between the good paragraph and the satisfactory paragraph?” and “What is the difference between the excellent paragraph and the good paragraph?”

Learners might also assess the example paragraphs by using a tiered assessment table like the one below. They can use the same table later to assess their own individual, pair or group-produced paragraphs. You can also adapt the table for your own use and even use it to summarise and present learners with accessible versions of exam criteria.

Sometimes it is very easy to recognise the least successful and most successful piece of work. However, sometimes the difference between grades or levels is more subtle. You should occasionally invite learners to evaluate pieces of work that are more similar in quality and rank them in order according to the assessment criteria provided. In this instance, it is useful to consider the length of each piece of work, so that learners understand that quantity does not always mean quality. Also, it is just as helpful for learners to understand that a single piece of work might show varying levels of success across the separate criteria.

Modelling through 'slow writing'

According to Child and Ellis in ‘The What, Why and How of Assessment’ (2021):

“Writing is a key competency for young people to master, but it can be difficult to assess reliably because of the requirement for students to demonstrate complex concepts such as creativity, persuasion, tone and a sense of audience.”

So, it helps to deconstruct learned writing techniques that learners can demonstrate themselves.

To involve learners in deconstructing and refining their writing in detail, you can use a technique called slow writing – a guided activity in which learners complete one sentence at a time before considering their creative writing work as a whole piece.

Below is an example of a slow-writing task in which learners must create their own version of the extract from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, when the monster comes to life in the laboratory. The learning objective is:

To consciously craft every sentence, using a variety of creative writing techniques.

Then, for each sentence, an instruction is provided and an example is modelled.

You can reveal the instructions to students one at a time. Or, you can invite them to share their work, assess each other’s work and refine one example at a time as they go along.

Although the process is slow, there are some AfL ’quick wins’ associated with the task, because learners have been guided to make sure they use a variety of creative writing techniques. All learners in the classroom can complete a simple checklist like the one below, motivating them to move forward after all that they have already achieved.

Later in the unit, a table like the one above can be used without having used the slow-writing task beforehand, to see if learners can produce their creative writing more independently.

A great way to introduce slow writing is to make the activity a group task, where learners discuss each sentence before writing it down and later swap their work with other groups to be assessed.

Once learners can use a variety of creative writing techniques, you can support them in understanding how far they have come and how they can refine these techniques. Remember, they have already been refining their sentences by working on one at a time, so they have been set up for success.

You can further adapt success criteria to suit the AfL activities in the classroom. For example, a table or list of success criteria can be split up into tiered expectations. Learners can assess their work by themselves or with their peers by highlighting one option from each row in the table.

With AfL activities like this, learners can also be encouraged to summarise their findings. For example, they can reflect on which columns are highlighted and copy and complete a few sentence stems that you have provided.

My work is mostly … but some of my work is …
My use of … is …
However, I can improve my use of … by …

Watch this video of more ideas for successful AfL strategies in English lessons.

Transcript

Questioning and dialogic teaching

“The most important single factor influencing learning is what the learner already knows.”
David Ausubel

Questioning

Establishing what learners already know is an essential principle of AfL and can be achieved through questioning and dialogic teaching – a process that enables a learner, with your help, to find out what they know and what they have yet to learn. You can use this information to establish a baseline of knowledge and then plan learners’ progress once you have a very clear overview of what they are confident with and what might be new or uncertain knowledge.

You could also use multiple choice questions to help establish what your students have already learned (their ‘prior knowledge’). Here is an example of how you might use this in English.

Several things are taking place in the brain as a learner selects a possible answer. The brain begins searching for connections to language, ideas or previous experiences that it might have already learned. This prior knowledge is then used as a tool for the brain to process the most likely answer to the question based on existing knowledge.

These informal methods that establish what and how much learners already know are also referred to as diagnostic assessment, which the Education Endowment Foundation defines as strategies that “provide frequent, quick opportunities for us to reflect on our pupils’ thinking, strengths, and weaknesses: interpreted with skill, they can give useful insights into pupil learning and the next steps we should take as teachers”.

The advantage for some learners is that they will have more prior knowledge than others, which is likely to make it easier for them to choose an answer. The opposite is also true – if learners have no knowledge about the Ancient Greeks, they will most likely have relied on a guess to select an answer. Instead of having the knowledge confirmed and supported (in the case where prior knowledge is already there) they have learned an isolated fact that, without connection to more knowledge, will easily be forgotten and a ‘gap’ will appear when they move on to the main task.

Assessing prior knowledge through AfL identifies gaps in learners’ knowledge, and this is where the role of the teacher begins to take shape. Teachers who plan for the topic or lesson, having already assessed prior knowledge, gain valuable information that helps further lesson planning by asking the following four basic questions.

What progress do learners need to make?
What misconceptions do learners often have about this topic?
How can the learning activity effectively bridge the gaps in learners’ knowledge?
Has the desired outcome been reached or is there an opportunity to revise, rethink or reteach the skill or knowledge?

Using AfL in this way encourages learners to make progress and reflect on the learning that has gone before and the learning that will take place after the lesson.

Dialogic teaching

Dialogic teaching – sometimes known as classroom talk – has strong connections to AFL and encourages learners to think deeply and communicate clearly in different contexts and in different ways.

It can support learners at the beginning of a topic or text, during the learning phase, and as a reflective activity at the end of the topic. It breaks away from traditional methods of instruction that are led by the teacher and driven by the teacher talking. It also allows students to speak to each other in small groups to ask questions, express opinions and better understand the focus of the learning – whether this is reading, writing, or speaking and listening.

A project carried out by the Education Endowment Foundation concluded that dialogic teaching could add two months of additional progress to learners in English, and also suggested that it improved learners’ abilities in overall thinking and learning skills rather than just content knowledge.

Here is a list of key ways to improve the quality of the English classroom talk.

Set the ground rules for classroom talk with your learners by asking them for suggestions and discussing why each rule is important.
Make effective use of questioning. ‘Open’ questions that require learners to probe further are useful for improving the quality of talk. Examples include: ‘What do you think about…?’, ‘How can you be sure?’ and ‘Is there another way of thinking about this?’
Provide ‘wait’ time and let learners process their thoughts before responding. Wait time is useful for learners to think deeply, think hard and form questions.
Respond with more questions to encourage further discussion. This will also help distance yourself from being seen as the person who has all the answers. Instead, it will confirm you as someone who listens and aids further discussions, intervening when necessary.
Think beyond just giving information or checking learners’ understanding. High-quality classroom talk enables AfL and can raise issues that you can plan to address in future lessons.
Give learners the key vocabulary and spoken language that you are expecting to hear and that will reflect how you expect them to write later. You could include the use of discussion frames for groups, pairs or the whole class to use when analysing a text, as in this illustration.

Dialogic teaching allows learners to hear many perspectives and ideas from their peers, helping them to gain new knowledge and understanding. One strategy that promotes this is ‘talking points’, a simple list of thought-provoking statements that are linked to the text being studied. By listening to the learners’ discussions, you can use their responses to assess what they already know, what issues or problems might occur during learning, or any misconceptions that may be circulating.

Here is an example of how talking points could be used in English Literature, using Shakespeare’s Macbeth. Learners might discuss some of the crimes that the plot reveals and try to rank them in order of seriousness.

A king who kills another king in battle.
A lord who kills a king.
A person who murders their best friend.
A person who hires someone to murder a woman and her children.
A woman who plots to kill a king.
Soldiers who kill in battle.

There are opportunities here to add sophisticated vocabulary to the task expectations. For example, a word for this task could be ‘regicide’, with a definition provided on the board and praise given when the word is used correctly in written and spoken work.

Encourage learners to respond to the statements (in pairs or small groups) to encourage discussion and find out what other people think. This short video provided by CEDiR – the Cambridge Educational Dialogue Research Group – gives information on how talking points could be used in the classroom.

Learners are sometimes reluctant to take part in dialogue with each other or with the teacher. While this might be frustrating to begin with, persevere and try another, similar method to begin classroom talk. You could do this by asking the question then inviting learners to write their thoughts down on sticky notes, before placing them in a box and drawing out some or all of them to read and respond to. This allows learners to remain anonymous while also contributing to the discussion. You can build up the skill set of the learners to increase confidence with the process until dialogic teaching is successful.

According to Gabriella Cliff-Hodges in her chapter on speaking and listening in ‘Learning to Teach English in the Secondary School:

“As a teacher, you will need to learn when and how to intervene in pupils’ discussions to help them move on, and when just to listen to what they have to say unprompted.”

So, teachers should learn to use their judgement about how and when to prompt learners, and when to take a step back to evaluate the quality of talk or simply allow it to naturally progress.

Dialogic Teaching: 10 principles of classroom talk provides a helpful outline for teachers as a starting point. Also, our Getting started with Oracy guide has theoretical and practical guidance on how dialogic teaching can be used across all subjects.

Verbal feedback, live marking and learner participation

“It’s the teacher that makes the difference, not the classroom.”
Michael Morpurgo

Verbal feedback and live marking

The teacher is at the heart of successful learning. They will introduce effective AfL opportunities into the lesson, including giving feedback.

The feedback that you can give to learners falls into two main categories – verbal and written. Both methods are effective and contribute to AfL but are understood to work in different ways. Learners see verbal feedback as more informal and a way of suggesting changes they could make, and written feedback as a more formal and direct commentary from teacher to student of what should be changed.

A study carried out by the Education Endowment Foundation found that secondary teachers spend an average of 9.4 hours a week adding comments to learners' work (this figure would be much higher for English teachers). It also showed that 72% of teachers used written targets for improvement as their main method of feedback, adding significantly to their workload but contributing little in terms of improving learners’ performance. Suggested changes to feedback practices include:

using verbal feedback more frequently in lessons;
treating careless mistakes differently to errors of genuine misunderstanding;
avoiding triple marking (at planning, editing and completed stages of the task); and
giving time in lessons for learners to consider and act on teachers’ feedback.

Encouraging learners to consider and discuss feedback also prompts teachers to purposefully plan when and how written feedback is used throughout a course of study, making feedback a fundamental part of lesson planning, rather than simply an addition.

Also, learners who take a more active role in their own learning not only develop positive self-regulation but also understand better how they can shape their learning experience.

For more extended tasks like delivering a speech, writing an essay or producing a creative story, you can ask learners to tell you a section or a particular skill they would like feedback on. This way the learner is setting the focus of the feedback.

Live marking is a form of verbal feedback that includes written marking of a learner’s work. An excellent lesson plan will include verbal feedback in the form of questioning, live marking and learner participation. In ‘Just Great Teaching’, Ross Morrison McGill recognises that “adapting to meet students’ needs in the classroom is the most reliable and effective form of assessment”. Therefore, planning a well-structured and engaging lesson, based on the needs of your learners, is a form of formative assessment. Considering where learners are, where they need to be and how they can be supported is a skill that teachers are always practising and refining.

Planning a lesson that allows for teacher-learner interactions such as live marking also serves as oracy practice. Talk is frequent and deliberately incorporated into the lesson. This has two major benefits. Firstly, teachers can better understand how certain learners respond to feedback (and cater to this). Secondly, students can familiarise themselves with the expectation to talk about their work and respond to feedback.

McGill explains that “verbal feedback … provides immediate focussed feedback to aid students in the lesson”. Immediate feedback and putting learning into context are vital for learning, especially when the work students produce in our classrooms is in the middle of attending hours of other lessons each day. In ‘Mark. Plan. Teach’, McGill suggests that “… meaningful feedback delivered in the lesson can make it easier for students to improve. Live marking permits the teacher to give students concise, regular feedback that can be acted on immediately”. The need to be concise is important – teachers and learners can both feel overwhelmed by giving and receiving lengthy, laborious feedback, especially in subjects like English that often involve extended writing and several drafts.

McGill explains that feedback “should motivate a student” and that “this is often achieved by reminding them of what they have already achieved”. McGill strongly believes that feedback should be “meaningful, manageable and motivating”.

If a lesson has been prepared well enough for there to be a class full of students engaged in a task for at least 15 to 20 minutes, there will be time for you to sit with one student at a time for a few minutes and read a paragraph of creative writing. Tell them what they did well, perhaps even praise their focus and efforts and then make a suggestion about what you would be excited to see them add to their work or hint at a change that you will praise later on. There is room in these few minutes to ask what the student’s goal was for their piece. This will give them the chance to form their own success criteria, achieve a sense of purpose for their writing and set expectations of the response they want from their readers. There is also time for the student to ask a question or read their favourite part out.

In ‘The Write Guide: Mentoring: The essential handbook for emerging and established writers’, Martin Goodman and Sarah Maitland define this kind of AfL interaction as the ‘consultation model’ and compare it to the ‘helping relationship’ between a doctor and patient. The patient should be able to express their needs clearly and ask specific questions that will help the doctor diagnose issues and offer solutions. Similarly, McGill evaluates live marking in lessons as a practice that “encourages teachers to give feedback that is diagnostic, closing in on specific areas to improve”. He offers advice for making a teacher’s workload manageable at the same time as making the feedback we give more meaningful. McGill suggests this diagnostic form of feedback could involve the teacher deciding to “choose one aspect of a student’s work to assess – just one section – and draw a yellow box around it. Mark it well and in detail offering feedback (verbally or in writing) that is sophisticated and above all, specific and diagnostic”. A step further would be to encourage the learner to draw a yellow box around a paragraph in an essay they would like to be ‘diagnosed on’, following Goodman and Maitland’s idea of the consultation model.

Verbal feedback and live marking in lessons is ‘meaningful’ because it specifically focuses on an area for development without overloading students with too much information. It is ‘manageable’ because it allows teachers to move efficiently around the classroom to at least five or six students, meaning that all students will have been included by the end of a week. It also means that you can see any issues with how students’ books are presented or the quality of their work, without needing to take books home. Finally, it is ‘motivating’ because it should always begin and end with praise. Also, students know they will have a chance to sit with you at some point and be accountable for their work. In other words, to know that their work matters.

Learner participation

If English students have a personal investment in what they are learning and communicating how they learnt it, they are more likely to be successful in the subject. AfL has a positive influence on this because it encourages interactions – from learner to learner, learner to teacher, and teacher to learner – that clarify meaning. This gives the learner control, which means they are better placed to complete tasks. This in turn motivates them, affecting their future effort and making them more interested in learning.

Personal investment in learning is important in every area of the curriculum but is especially important in English lessons, where learning is both knowledge-based and skills-based. Teachers can have a strong influence on what motivates learners and have a role to play in developing self-regulation by using AfL consistently and strategically in the classroom. There are three areas of motivation, as follows.

Orientation – the personal reasons a learner has for wanting or needing to learn. For example, an initial motivation such as a personal interest (or an interest from their peer group).
Effort – the persistence of the learner to complete the learning task. Effort often has positive consequences on learning behaviour that affects further learning. For example, if a learner makes an effort in a difficult task and receives meaningful feedback and praise from a teacher, it may encourage them to continue with more complex tasks.
Effect – the explanations that learners give that evaluate their performance in a task. These effects may be internal (being able to explain their own ability and areas where they can improve) or external (explanations that blame lack of success on external factors). Learners are more motivated to improve if they see successful learning as something that they can control rather than something outside of their control.

According to Ross Morrison McGill, “feedback should improve the learner, not the piece of work”. There is considerable evidence to support the link between successful learning and self-regulation in learners. Similarly, James Mannion, co-author of ‘Fear is the Mind Killer’, states that “… developing self-regulation involves making implicit processes of learning explicit, and then providing students with regular, low-stakes opportunities to develop, practise and rehearse a range of strategies that work for them”. Making learning ‘explicit’ involves sharing success criteria, using AfL within lessons, helping learners understand why and how they’ve made progress and talking to them about their learning.

Self-regulation is also an important part of a learner’s well-being throughout their education. For instance, the strategies they use to help them learn to cope academically and emotionally with class tests prepare them for mock exams, which in turn prepares them for their final exams. Similarly, the way in which we use scaffolding and modelling to support AfL lessons reflects the way we can support the self-regulation of our learners. James Mannion suggests that we “co-regulate – modelling and practising strategies with them – before withdrawing that support over time”.

Daniel Willingham’s 2011 article Can Teachers Increase Students’ Self-Control? Discusses how self-regulation is essential to learning and how teachers can work on creating opportunities for self-regulation in their classrooms. Higher levels of self-regulation have been associated with reading proficiency and stronger academic achievement.

The article also presents the consequences for learners with poor self-regulation. These are persistent disobedience and demonstrations of negative emotions, such as anger and frustration, which have a negative effect on learning. Willingham suggests that the same factors that improve self-regulation at home – feelings of warmth, belonging, organisation and predictability – also seem to be important in promoting self-regulation in the classroom. Those who will benefit the most from a positive classroom atmosphere will be the learners who initially had poor self-regulation. Willingham concludes by urging teachers to do all they can to support learners in their self-regulation. In ‘Neurodiversity and Education’, Ellis, Kirby and Osborne echo the importance of learners’ self-regulation and reflect that:

“While the role of the teacher is fundamental in shaping and embedding effective inclusive practice, we must not overlook the importance of equipping students with the tools to adapt their own learning experiences. At its most effective, inclusive education becomes a shared space between teachers and their students. Emphasising this aspect of inclusive teaching and learning not only leads to impactful inclusive practice but also practice that is sustainable for the teacher and an active approach to learning for the students.”

Teacher workload

As mentioned above, subjects like English require a significant number of feedback hours, due to the large amount of written work and essay writing. So it is important that English teachers are supported with their planning, marking and teaching workload. AfL is an effective process that does not need to fully rely on the teacher for maximum benefit – self-assessment, peer-assessment and group-assessment activities are equally valuable to learning and progress.

It is important for schools to have clear marking expectations that suit the needs of the learners and the capacity of the teachers. For instance, an English team might decide that written teacher feedback is required once before each end-of-unit test, and this feedback can be in response to a paragraph, a whole piece of work, or individual or group work. Perhaps this feedback can be provided during a lesson, through live marking, or as a session with the whole class.

You can also use more efficient ways of recording common successes and targets across whole classes or year groups. This will involve learners and prevent some of the
time-consuming and repetitive aspects of high volumes of marking. Here is an example of the success criteria that can be used for a lesson on writing formal letters .

You can display or provide the above example for learners throughout the lesson, so that they can check what to include throughout the task. Or learners can produce a formal letter in groups, with one learner being responsible for checking that the criteria are met.

For some tasks, you can give learners ‘success’ and ‘target’ numbers (as in the table above) as feedback for their work. Not only does this save time if you often find yourself writing out the same targets several times when marking work, but it can also prompt the learner to actively take part in their own AfL by reflecting on successes and targets in simple recorded summaries, as below.

It is worth noting that number systems should be used in combination with other forms of feedback and at carefully selected intervals during a course of study, otherwise it will risk seeming out of context.

AfL can be used with mock exams to address writing construction issues with learners. Daisy Christodoulou’s 2017 article ‘Feedback and English mocks’ looks specifically at the idea of providing formative feedback from mock exams. Currently, the most popular form of feedback is written comments which, as mentioned above, are both time-consuming and very often not followed up by learners. Christodoulou suggests that the comments provided by the teacher are not always focused, specific or clear about what the learner needs to do to improve. Also, the distinction between knowledge-based improvements, or improvements in writing, are not clear – learners cannot act on feedback that they don’t understand.

Christodoulou’s solution is practical and simple – tell learners how they can improve. You can tell them this verbally so they can act on it in the same lesson. She provides a useful example of how this might look in a lower secondary lesson on narrative writing and highlights specific actions that both the student and the teacher can take.

You can find more advice from Daisy Christodoulou on her website No More Marking.

You can also watch this video of opinions about some of the challenges faced by English teachers.

Transcript

The following case study is an example of how teachers might develop, and reflect on, AfL in their English lessons.

Case study

James teaches a lower secondary English class that has a mix of language abilities – most are first-language learners, some are English second-language learners. James has noticed that when he gives a text to the learners for them to read and respond to, they are mainly concentrating on the choice of vocabulary and are not looking deeper into the language of the text and the effects that the choice of language has on the readers. This is affecting the types of writing they produce and the end-of-topic tests.

James begins by acknowledging the prior skill of his students – that they can write about vocabulary very easily – and decides to use modelling as his AfL strategy to address this issue. He selects a short passage from a fiction narrative that the students have not seen before to help him model the strategy.

In the next lesson, James writes his learning intentions on the board, using clearly displayed success criteria and stating:

“I’m looking for writing that includes vocabulary that has been used by the author to achieve an effect. I am also looking for your thoughts on what the author wants the reader to learn or understand by using this word or this sentence.”

He then distributes the short passage to the learners and gives them time to read, think and underline any vocabulary they have noticed. James then gives the learners five minutes to discuss, in pairs, the choices they have made and explain why they have made them. They have a further minute to write down anything they found interesting from the discussion or change their vocabulary selection.

Meanwhile James has written the following on the board.

The five ‘layers’ of meaning:

Literal meaning of words
Strengths and shades
Associations of words
Sensory effect
Emotional effect

James talks to the students about how language can be deconstructed and how layers are revealed – he picks the word ‘king’ as his example of vocabulary from the passage and uses a dual-coding ‘Strengths and Shades’ chart to ask the class what qualities a king might have. The sun represents positive qualities through connotations of shining and brightness. The half-moon represents negative qualities through connotations of darkness. Providing visual representations alongside verbal instruction is also an example of Allan Paivio’s Dual Coding theory:

“Pavio discovered that our memory has two codes (or channels) that deal with visual and verbal stimuli. Whilst it stores them independently, they are linked (linking words to images). These linked memories make retrieval much easier. The word or image stimulates retrieval of the other. When teachers employ a dual coding mindset to their learning materials, the student’s cognitive load is reduced and their working memory capacity is increased, thus, learning is improved.”

As the learners respond, James records their words.

He then asks the students to think about the other column – What qualities might a king have that are hidden or not fully revealed? Again, the class responds, and James records their words.

James asks his students to think for one minute about what the author is trying to tell the reader about the king, then asks them to write down what they were thinking about. As they are writing, he walks around the class and observes what they are writing without commenting. He notices that their sentences were longer and more complex and most students were beginning to look at the deeper levels of language – all of them can write about why the author might have used the word ‘king’. The writing shows originality and creativity – very few of the answers are similar.

James then asks learners to repeat the same process in pairs, using their selected vocabulary. He notices again that most were able to write with longer, more complex sentences and look at the deeper levels of language.

He asks students to self-assess whether they think their writing meets the success criteria on the board. Most students agree. The self-assessment made by the students was very similar to what James observed as he walked around the class.

On reflection, James was happy that including active participation in looking more deeply at language supported not only the learners’ knowledge but their skills in writing about it. The think time and paired discussions supported all learners by giving them more time to process and explore the language before they did the writing task. In the next lesson, James decides that giving some vocabulary about emotions that a reader might feel, for example, outrage, discomfort, admiration and empathy, would provide useful scaffolding to support the learners further in looking deeper at language. He also decides that if he did the same process again, he would model another part of the ‘layers’, such as the associations with words, which would also support vocabulary-building and knowledge of how language conveys meanings.

Reflection and next steps

“We do not learn from experience. We learn from reflecting on our experience.”
John Dewey

Reflecting on your teaching practice helps to improve AfL in English lessons. Knowing your students, their strengths and their weaknesses, and being critical of your lesson planning by anticipating potential risks and rewards, helps you to assess where you can use AfL daily in the classroom.

As a starting point, think about how you use talk in the classroom and the purpose of that talk. The role of talk and discussion is crucial if AfL is to be effective in English lessons. Discussion provides a method of observing how learners are using a particular skill or concept and provides an opportunity to refine and rethink opinions and ideas based on contributions from other learners. Refining ideas through classroom talk can be transferred into written pieces and form the basis of analysis and evaluation skills.

Teacher assessment of English tasks is often subjective. So there should be opportunities for following standard criteria when assessing mock exams, creative writing, analytical essays and speaking and listening tasks. Make time for subject team moderation meetings, where you can make sure everyone understands the marking criteria. Invite members of the team to model best practice for assessing a piece of work according to the criteria. Moderation might also involve ranking a selection of work.

As a team, find other opportunities in your department or across more than one subject area to explore AfL further. For example, organise a comparative marking meeting where each teacher in the department looks at two anonymous pieces of student work and decides which is the better piece of writing, using simple phrases like ‘more sophisticated’, ‘expected standard’ or ‘working towards’. Then allow teachers to see how others have judged the work so that you have a shared understanding of what a good piece of writing looks like and agree on marking standards.

Include a variety of paired, group and whole-team moderation. Also, be sure to recognise key advice or issues that arise from any form of moderation. For instance, has the moderation process informed the future teaching of a particular unit of work? Has the process uncovered gaps or weak areas in the teaching of the unit? Has it allowed teachers to reflect on where they may have been too generous or severe when awarding marks? Addressing this final question will support the integrity of marks that may later contribute to key data. For instance, a school’s predicted grades process relies on effective assessment processes for fairness and accuracy. You can find more advice about the key principles around predicted grades and the processes that lead up to them in our predicted grades guide.

Another idea might be to consider lesson observations. These can help the observer to see how AfL works in different classroom situations. Also, deciding success criteria before observing the lesson is a useful way to stay focused on AfL. For example, consider using these questions.

Can the students link this lesson to prior knowledge?
Are the students able to talk about what they are learning and why?
Do students take responsibility for their learning?
Does the school have a marking policy that is manageable for teachers and will benefit learners?

Cambridge Schools also have access to Resource Plus on the School Support Hub, which includes a range of resources and videos to support the teaching and learning of English.

Glossary

Consultation model

When teachers and learners work together to improve a piece of work, where the learner says where or how they need support and the teacher offers questions and advice in response.

Deconstructing

Breaking down the complex process of a piece of work into simple parts that can be discussed by learners.

Diagnostic assessment

Quick, low-stakes tasks (often done at the start of a unit or lesson) designed to find out what learners already know and where they might have gaps in their knowledge.

Dialogic teaching

The ongoing talking activities between learners, and between learners and teachers, that are designed to enable learning to take place.

Discussion frames

Written guidance and examples provided for classroom talk, to help learners with key vocabulary and spoken language.

Dual coding

Based on Allan Paivio’s theory of cognition, dual coding is to provide learners with visual and verbal information at the same time. This might be in the form of images combined with teacher instruction.

Formative assessment

Activity that provides students with developmental feedback on their progress during the learning programme and informs their next steps in learning.

Live marking

One-to-one time in which the teacher provides a combination of verbal and written feedback on a learner’s work, during a task.

Modelling

Providing learners with an example of how to produce a piece of work and how the finished piece should look.

Moderation

The process of more than one teacher considering a graded or ungraded piece of work together and coming to a conclusion about where and how marks should be awarded, according to the relevant criteria.

Oracy

The skills involved in using spoken language to communicate effectively.

Scaffolding

The teacher provides appropriate guidance and support to enable learners to continue to build on their current level of understanding to gain confidence and independence in using new knowledge or skills.

Self-regulation

Recognising, understanding and therefore being in greater control of our feelings and behaviour.

Sentence stems

Short prompts to help learners structure their verbal or written answers.

Success criteria

A list of features that learners are expected to include in their work.

Tiered modelling

Providing learners with low-quality and high-quality examples of work, in order of increasing success.

Introduction

Success criteria and modelling

Success criteria

Modelling

Tiered modelling

Modelling through 'slow writing'

Questioning and dialogic teaching

Questioning

Dialogic teaching

Verbal feedback, live marking and learner participation

Verbal feedback and live marking

Learner participation

Teacher workload

Case study

Reflection and next steps

Further Reading

Glossary