At Chorlton High School we have taken a new approach to how we assess a student progress at KS3.

When assessing and reporting home to parents we want to be able to 

  • Measure how well students have learnt the curriculum so that we know that students are secure in their knowledge and can be successful for the next stage of their education
  • Evaluate their attitude, approach and learning habits using the CHS Effort grade so that they can become confident independent learners. Further information on this can be found here.

Knowledge

When we assess students we want to be able to understand how well students can remember and apply what they have been taught. We split this in to two different types of knowledge called declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge.

Declarative Knowledge is often referred to as ‘Knowing what’. We assess students on the details of what they have been taught.

Procedural Knowledge is often referred to as ‘Knowing how’. We assess students on how well they can apply the facts and ideas that they have been learning. This is often built upon the declarative knowledge, but often students have to apply their knowledge to a new context that may not be familiar.

Teacher assess students regularly. At Chorlton High School ‘assessment for learning’ is built into each lesson so that the teachers gauge how well students are understanding the information as we go along. We use ‘low stakes testing’ as formative assessment and these are moments in the lessons where we use techniques such as questioning, a quick fact test or any other method of retrieval practice to ascertain the level of student knowledge.

This way the teacher then knows whether to revisit concepts, or to address any misconceptions so that they know how well students are learning during the lessons. It is also important to know how well the learning is remembered over time. It is one thing knowing the information at the end of the lesson, but can students still remember this after the lessons? Home Study, which is our name for revision, is essential to support knowledge acquisition. The more you practice a topic, the better you remember it! 

Our more formal tests at KS3, or our Summative Assessments, are our KS3 Progress Tests.

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