I attended this event this afternoon/evening, and it was well worth it. It was organised by the National Association of Language Advisers (North West region) of which I am a member.
I’m sure that to many of you, the information isn’t new, but in case you wanted a refresher, I’ve put my notes below for you to take a look at, or take away!
I apologies to the two speakers, David Mee, and John Halksworth, if I have misinterpreted any of their comments, but hopefully I have done them justice!
If you’re in or near the North West of England on 1st March and are interested in some quality CPD related to Controlled Assessment, then can I point you in the direction of this event:
Don’t worry that both of the speakers are Spanish moderators – as the flyer says, it’s the underlying principles and ideas that will be offered which are important.
NALA (National Association of Language Advisers) put on great events, and so if you can make it, I think you would find it worthwhile.
I love using film in lessons, but I believe the audience should participate in some way; too many times, films are used as a method of keeping pupils quiet towards the end of term, which for me diminishes the art and craft of film making. I want to encourage my pupils to watch foreign language films, even after they stop learning the language.
So here’s one of my favourites. I absolutely love this film, and use any opportunity to show it to my students, because they usually love it too.
I find it interesting and useful for the classroom on many levels:
First and foremost, it’s a great story.
It’s set in a school, so has a lot of young protagonists, which is usually a bonus for hooking pupils in.
The students are from a range of backgrounds (social, cultural, family).
Tranferring the original story from USA to Germany provides an extra dimension when considering autocratic government/leadership.
It opens up avenues to discuss some of Germany’s historical past, and to dispel some myths.
I use the film in a number of ways, depending on the class I have:
One year, I used the film as a stimulus for an extended piece of writing, before watching the film.
I showed my class some stills from the film, and told them nothing other than the names of the characters and that the setting was school. I told them they could be either one of the characters, or a friend of one of the characters. I suggested that they think about describing the people, their relationships, the school, and what a typical day would be like. For more able, I added that they might want to use their imaginations to describe something unusual that happened at school.
They loved it! The less able (it was a mixed GCSE group containing pupils with targets from A to G) did basic descriptions of the characters, whilst the more able had one of the pupils with a crush on the teacher, or one of the pupils stabbing another!
After working hard on the task, the reward was to watch the film, and the pupils were intrigued to see what actually happened to each of the characters. Some were very close to the truth.
With a much weaker group, I introduced the film and some of the historical/political references which they might have missed, and let them watch it. Afterwards they used a gap fill exercise to summarise the story.
This year’s Year10 group get to watch it after they’ve done their next Controlled Assessment – 0n school!
I was catching up today with a very good friend who is a retired teacher. I happened to mention that I had just read this article in the TES, headlined Labour to ‘guarantee’ C in English and maths. Now that would be something good … perhaps even miraculous? With the best will in the world, this seems at best an ill-advised statement to make. Whilst I am completely in favour of every child leaving school with a minimum level of literacy and numeracy, I cannot accept that a GCSE grade C is either the way to demonstrate this, nor achievable by all.
Mike Baker’s article from the ASCL conference in Manchester words it slightly differently:
A further question for the Labour Party’s policy review, he [Andy Burnham] said, would be how to ensure that all students reach adulthood with a ‘decent proficiency in maths and English’. He said he wanted a debate to see if it is possible ‘to have the ambition for all students to leave with at least a grade C in GCSE maths and English’.
I’m sure there are several people who would be willing to engage in this debate with the policy makers.
My retired friend said it reminded her of when she was a pupil at school, at a presentation event. The local dignitary charged with handing out the awards praised all those who had been successful, and ended with the encouraging words “Now next year, I want to see all of you getting above the average.”
Now I don’t claim to be any kind of mathematician, but I would love to know how he expected that to happen …
I was going to start with ‘it’s that time of year again’, but nowadays, it always seems like ‘that time of year’. Year 11 are preparing for yet another controlled assessment, and I am running out of inspirational ways to help them get ready.
I went through all the usual stuff again – “once I give you this task, I can’t help you with anything else”; “you have until next Monday to prepare”; “no, you can’t use those verbs in your 40 words” – usually followed by “a verb is an action word”!
And then there’s the issue that always makes me wonder if I’m doing it correctly- “you can’t take home your draft or your planning sheet”. “But Miss, isn’t most of this in our exercise books anyway…?”
And of course, it is, because that’s the vocabulary and grammar they have been learning in lessons for the past few weeks. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been doing my job properly. I feel like I’ve missed something somewhere, but I am assured that I haven’t.
So therefore I started to ask myself – Are these assessments just hoops to jump through, or are they really giving our pupils the opportunity to respond spontaneously to the target language? For me, until we see how the examination results turn out, it’s still in the balance …
Before the Christmas holidays, I mused on why I was feeling anxious about the GCSE Controlled Assessments (Panic? Moi?) in which I set out an outline for an attempt to help both teachers and pupils feel a little more confident.
Well, that day was last Wednesday, and I’m pleased to report that it was generally regarded as a successful venture. We ended up having to be a little flexible with some of the timings, but for a first attempt, I was pleased. Staff appeared to be smiling on the day, which indicated things were going reasonable to plan. No pupils were sent to me for non-participation, which was a delight. And pupil feedback so far has identified the following:
pupils feel more confident about tackling their actual Controlled Assessments when the time comes (little do they know, but the first one isn’t that far off!)
they also feel more confident in their language lessons as a result
pupils enjoyed working with people from other groups with whom they wouldn’t normally work
for several pupils, it was their first viewing of a film in a foreign language
the majority of pupils enjoyed seeing the film, and wanted to see more in a foreign language
On a personal level, I do feel more confident myself now with the Controlled Assessments; having had to prepare the plan for the day, it really made me think about the structure and sequence of the tasks, and my teaching methods. Although the final written task was not the most important thing for me, for the most part I was delighted with the work which was produced, with some pupils achieving a better standard that I had thought they would have done. And finally, I think I have a better relationship with my class now, and feel that we are all heading in the same direction, which is an added bonus.
I’m happy to share the day’s resources if anyone would be interested – just let me know.
To keep morale up, a lot of tea was definitely consumed during the breaks – and the major criticism from pupils seems to be that they wanted chocolate whilst watching the film. Ho hum, sometimes you just can’t win …
When I hear the words ‘Controlled Assessment’, this is what I think…
I think I’ve been worrying more about the new controlled assessments than my pupils! And I suppose that’s to be expected, because although neither of us really knows what we’re in for yet, I at least have been pondering the practicalities since around March, whereas Year 10 are just trusting me to do the right thing. No pressure there, then!
I have therefore persuaded the languages department to take a proactive approach, and we will be ‘training’ Year 10 in the requirements of the written task in January, although not actually using the outcome as a ‘proper’ task.
The idea is this: school is suspending the normal school timetable on 13th January, to enable such things as super learning days and theatre visits to occur, and the languages department is taking Year 10 for the day.
I am going to introduce the concept of the controlled assessment to them together, then we will split into groups of the different taught languages.
Pupils will be given some still images from a film in the language they are studying, but (hopefully) have not seen.
Teachers will lead pupils in deciding what information they could give about the stimulus images, and perhaps share some useful phrases.
In small groups, pupils will create sentences or phrases to describe the images.
The title of the task will be given to pupils. Working alone, they will be given a restricted amount of time to compile their response, and condense it to something resembling the 40 word list they are allowed to use for the assessment.
Pupils will then have around 30 minutes to write up their work, using only their prompts.
To round things off, we’re going to let them see part of the chosen film, to see how close their comments were to the reality of the film’s characters. On the off-chance that one of the pupils reads this (highly unlikely, I’m sure), I’m not going to divulge the title of the task just yet, but will gladly share all after the event.
The idea isn’t to produce a decent piece of writing (although that would help!), but to understand the steps involved in this part of their GCSE examination.
Maybe I’m mad to try this, but I don’t want the first experience of a controlled assessment to be an actual one, as I don’t think it’s fair. And I also think it will be good for me as a teacher to get my head around the structure of the beast, even if the timescale is squashed. It’s still making me tackle something I’m nervous about, which can’t be all bad.
Am I totally bananas? Have you just jumped in with a proper assessment? I’d be interested to know your thoughts.
