Curriculum Assessment
Students are set targets that we expect them to achieve based on their Key stage 2 SAT’s.
Regular low stakes testing ensure that children embed knowledge into their long-term memory.
Students are assessed by a combination of peer, self and teacher assessments. In Key Stage 3 WIN assessments take place twice per half term for core and once for foundation subjects. There is also an end of term test of cumulative knowledge.
WIN assessments take place twice per half term for both core and foundation subjects in Key Stage 4. Year 11 complete a mock exam period that mirrors the summer examination schedule.
Following three cycles of data to measure progress across the school an academic care package is implemented and overseen by the Pupil Progress Co-ordinator, identifying gaps in learning and ensuring the appropriate intervention is available to close those gaps.
Read on for more information on the other forms of assessment we use at Co-op Academy Swinton.
Quizzing
There are many forms of quizzing that will be used in our lessons to measure what our students know and have retained.
Giving students the resources, they can use to study from in advance, allows them to prepare. A good quiz should be designed to build confidence with every student aiming at a high success rate.
A quiz should allow all students to answer all the questions, not giving them a selection or hearing answers before they’ve been able to check their own recall. Quizzes can be done as mini paper test, asked verbally one by one or presented all at once for students to answer in their own time.
In addition to the retrieval practice itself, the most useful outcome from a quiz is that each student learns where they have gaps in their knowledge and the teacher learns what the common gaps are.
Ask a set of short factual recall questions, varying in style
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Ask 5–10 questions checking for recall in a variety of styles: short answer fact check; short problem solving
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Multiple choice questions; True/False; error spotting; labelling diagrams/image recognition
- Recitation of quotes or definitions; short bullet-point lists.
Self Quizzing
Quizzing routinely helps to check that students have learnt the material. This is a valuable tool that provides information to the student and teacher about where the gaps exist. Using quizzes in lessons reinforces the retrieval strength of the material so it’s easier to remember later.
Self quizzing builds positive habitual behaviours, the more it is done, the more fluently students remember. Providing students with the answers allows them to compare against the teachers model and their own for accuracy. Peer checking is a useful alternative. A simple way for this to be implemented is using the look, cover, write, check method.
Knowledge Organisers
The purpose of a knowledge organiser is to provide students with accessible guidance about knowledge that they can study on their own; a secure schema with strong recall. A knowledge organiser is usually a one-page document, which presents curated, essential, organised knowledge with clarity. Knowledge is presented in a format, which facilitates retrieval practice, elaboration and organisation to develop schema.
WIN Assessments
Please see the PDFs below detailing the main assessments your child will complete during the academic year. These assessments underpin the learning outcomes taking place during learning throughout the curriculum. Your child will have a set of knowledge organisers that will help them revise for these assessments. The class teacher will inform all students of the exact date these will take place and students can use their notebooks and knowledge organisers to help them revise.