Module 3: Assessment for quality learning - Maths

Unit 9: Strategies for developing learner-centred assessment Practices

Assessing students’ achievements and progress has taken on a significant focus in recent years, so that much more emphasis is given to the role of assessment as an on-going part of the daily teaching and learning process. This Unit asks you to look at your current assessment practices and provides insight into different ways of finding out what your students know and understand at different stages of mathematical learning. This will enable you to plan more effective and targeted lessons. The Unit also discusses the importance of giving feedback to students about their achievements in Maths.

Units 10–11: Questioning techniques to promote formative assessment practice for student learning (double Unit)

This Unit is a double Unit because questioning is such an important part of the teaching and learning cycle. How and when a teacher uses questioning and what kinds of questions they use can have a dramatic impact on a lesson and successful learning outcomes for students. Too many Maths teachers ask mainly closed questions where a student has to just give the correct answer. This Unit explores how, by asking more open-ended questions, a Maths teacher can help students to think more deeply and become more interested in a range of mathematical topics. Students can also be encouraged to ask their own questions about a topic, which they can then try to answer through investigation. Such approaches stimulate much more participation and success in learning.

Unit 12: Recording progress in learning

It is important that you, as a Maths teacher, keep records of your students’ progress that you can use to plan the next steps of their learning. This Unit explores how important it is to have clear learning outcomes for each Maths lesson and for the Maths teacher to be clear about what evidence they need to be sure that a student knows and understands what was taught. The Unit also shows how a list of test marks will tell you little, but how annotated samples of students’ work or test marks with comments can give you a much better picture of their progress and thus enable you to plan more effective next steps. Keeping a range of records will allow you to identify more clearly which students need extra support and what kind of support they need.