Paul Carney
Visual Artist, Author & Educator

Formative Assessment Key Stage 4

Perhaps the most anxious assessment is exam based assessment because it is such a balancing act. As I mentioned earlier, two important things that you should do are; Make some clear and visible resources that show what successful work looks like so that your students have a constant reminder of what is expected, and furthermore PLAN for assessment in appropriate ways for every lesson. 

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Planning is so important and you must make sure that you are maximising motivation/interest in the work, meeting the needs of your students, providing regular, constructive help, encouragement and advice and promoting successful outcomes. 

Put yourself in the student's shoes. They are getting it in the neck from every teacher AND at home and art takes so much time to do they are easily inclined to think; "Is art worth it?" 

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So the skill here is to nip at their heels lightly, but early and often. NEVER wait until the end or midway through a project to assess work. By this time you will have lost the game. These forms of assessment should only confirm what you already know. 

The important thing is to plan for assessment in every lesson but in such a way as it seems natural. Progress indicators are perfect for this. Your interactive whiteboard should proudly display what good progress should look like. Whilst the class are working it could even be running through a presentation of slides that show the student examples of good progression. By the end of this lesson you should have completed x, y and z to a good standard etc. A reminder to the class that they will need to complete any unfinished work as extra homework will be a good incentive. 

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Another good tip is to give each student a post-it note at the start of the lesson and ask them to jot down what they hope to achieve in the lesson then stick this on the corner of the desk. When you are moving around the room you can check their progress to this target and see if it is feasible. At the end of the lesson you can make a quick judgement call such as; ‘John, Peter and Charlotte have made good progress today, David worked to a high standard but Craig and Wendy need to catch-up what they didn't get done today, can I see this finished by the start of next lesson please? 

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By using methods such as these you and they can see if they have achieved good progress regularly and often. This is vital because in exam art every second is vital. Your marks book or planner should have records of progress in every lesson and every homework. I will mark a cross against a students name for absence then make sure I inform them that they need to catch up missing work as homework. It is a wise GCSE teacher who keeps a diary in the back of their planner of their C students and makes time to enter a quick note against their name each time they miss a lesson target. "Didn't complete research (date)" "Needs to finish printing (date) because if these build up then you need to get extra help. 

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I also mark each stage of a GCSE project as a separate entity, as it is being produced. In a linear project where every student is following my lead this is easy. So when we have finished the development stage I will mark that Assessment Objective to the GCSE specification criteria using the points system. Students stick a template in their books and record this grade and add a comment of their own to say what they need to do to improve. I then repeat this for the other assessment objectives as they are completed. By the end of the project they, and I have a complete record of their progression. I can add comments to inform them how they can improve their project and they can refer back to it themselves also. 

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You have to make sure the work is set at the right pace for all ability levels, that students who are struggling can get help at every turn, that the work is interesting and inspiring, that high ability levels are stretched and that all students are working to the best of their ability level. This all comes from your planning and I advise you to build in assessment benchmarks regularly that are simple enough for the students to understand and relate to. High achieving art departments often have very tight, very prescriptive courses 

of study that leave little room for doubt what is required from the student. In these departments students know exactly what grade they are working at and what they need to do to improve. All of this is attained by diligent, hard work by the teacher. The real skill is being able to get this level of work from your students. 

 

 

Intervention - Lower Attaining Students 

It is extremely hard to get lower attaining students motivated into wanting to work hard for you. The best way I know is to make the projects relevant to them and their culture, give them as much modern technology as you can, such as: digital cameras, photocopying, printing and tracing, etc, and steer away from writing complex, lengthy text. Also, try not to hold these students back in the process too much. They usually hate having to produce design sheets and just want to get on and 'do,' so design your course so it is full of short activities that get good results rather than long winded intensive studies. Make homework tasks interesting and invite them to work in your room over a lunch time to do it. 

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Have a good system of discipline in place. Make sure they know their boundaries and what is not acceptable behaviour. Telephone home as often as you need to and use whatever the school system is to punish bad behaviour. Finally, make sure you have a seating plan from the outset. Don't allow the troublemakers the chance to sit with their friends. Make them sit with quiet, hard working ones! Finally, low ability students have a habit of throwing their work in the bin. They do this a lot and they do it because they believe it to be 'rubbish' so you can get to the end of a two year course and find that they have little or no work at all. They will also stop working on their work to start over. So at the end of a lesson it looks like they have done little or no work when they have just been getting very frustrated. You can't keep working side by side with them all the time because it ruins their image with their peers. 

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The only way of getting round this is to provide clear intervention. Having identified your high priority students you need to get them on their own, in a quiet corner, during break or after school and go through their work in a positive and encouraging way. Look for any strength, however tiny and build it up like it is a real strength. Make them feel like they can really pass this course with just a few modifications. Then, give them one or two tasks to do. You might feel like giving them a lot more, but don’t. Make the tasks easy to understand, in simple plain English and write it down. Stick a post it note or two on the work near where you want them to work. Then talk to them about WHEN they are going to able to do the work. Do they have a space to work at home? Do they need to take materials home? How long do you want them to work on these tasks? Nail it down simply and clearly, then follow it up. 

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You need to check on these students progress constantly without being too pressured. Make it light, look over their shoulder and smile. By breaking tasks up into small chunks, allowing copious amounts of copying and tracing and keeping watch to make sure they aren't destroying their work you will get better results. Plenty of praise helps, but only genuine praise! You are never going to make a silk purse from a sow's ear but if you plan the right projects and play it clever you can get decent results from even the most difficult students. 

 

Getting High Grades 

So you have hopefully sorted out the low attaining students, you know your target pass rate, you have a programme of study sorted and you have set up a strong system of management. Time to get those 9s. 

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If you look at sets of work that is grade 9 standard you see the same qualities: quantity, quality and consistency. There is always more work than the others in the class and it is always consistently high quality. More than this there is a passion and commitment to their work. Often, images and motifs are repeated to get it right, refining and modelling the idea. The standard of drawing and painting skills are often (but not always) high. There is exploration of other materials and the student can be seen to try out other ideas. 

You can't force this type of working or even demand it. You can't even insist that the student needs to do more to get a 9 and that this isn't enough. Well, you can, but you will anger and frustrate the students considerably. The best way to achieve this standard of work is to get the project planning right so that it motivates. If the project you set raises the interest and curiosity of your students and they 'get into it' they will begin to work hard. If they are switched on to the work then you won't need to force your students to work: they will do it themselves. 

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You need to provide a project that has the flexibility to allow infinite possibilities whilst building in a safety net for the less able. The self image project is a perfect example of this. On one level it could be a tracing of a Photoshopped digital photograph, painted. On the other hand it can have infinite possibilities to become a wonderful piece of creative, unique artwork. 

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Try to give opportunities for your students to work outside of school hours. Good grades take time to achieve and it is often just that your best students are being pressured by many other subjects. Put up posters announcing that you are hosting an after-school club and/or a lunch time club for art. Then try to make your club as fun and interesting as you can. Buy some soft drinks and sweets, play music, let them wear casual clothes if you are allowed, but make sure your after-school class is too cool for school! 

The minute you start behaving like a teacher and bossing everyone around they will go home and not come back! If you keep your after-school class running it will eventually become a habit and your students will see it as a way of getting extra work done. Every successful art department NEEDS a successful after-school club and a lunch club. 

 

 

The 4/5 Borderline 

Of all the assessment areas this is the most important and hardest to differentiate. You can easily see the best work at high grade just as easily as you can spot less able work, but establishing where the 4/5 boundary is, is harder. Grade 3 work is less convincing, there's slightly less of it and the skill level is that bit lower. It is harder to find any work that smacks of being of a good standard. Grade 4 work by contrast is just that bit thicker in quantity, it is inconsistent and patchy in quality, but there is some real evidence of ability mixed in with some lower standard work. Some students are just grade 3. You could teach them until next year and they would still be a grade 3. However 3 = Fail so you must raise these students up by hook or by crook. 

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Mark their work in detail; really pick out what simple and effective things you can do to make it better. Can they mount it more cleverly? Can they just work into some of those drawings to improve them? Do they need to research a little more? Have they missed any important bits through absence? Pull them back into school and get them to work that bit harder under your supervision. Do not let them fail! 

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When you get collect data about a project assessment, you need to act on it immediately and not wait until the end of a project because it is too late then to do very much about any problems you might have. The Head of Department should have your classes Key Stage 3 results on hand, therefore, you should have a strong idea about their predicted grades already. If there is underachievement then you cannot afford to leave it go unnoticed. 

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You can usually get a decent indication of what your predicted pass rate will be after the first lesson of year 10! So if you see that a student is not performing you can pick this up early. If you check your department's assessment at the Oct half term of year 10 then you can check this against expected predictions. If you come across any anomalies then speak to the staff member first to find out why this is. Then speak to the student and parents if you need to. By careful analysis and monitoring of your whole cohort on a regular basis then you will have no surprises by the end of year. 

 

Target setting 

Targets, targets, targets! Oh how I hate them. I hates them I do! I wish I didn't have to have them but I do. Most schools can provide each student with an expected or predicted grade for each subject. Your management team might want to raise that benchmark and set target predictions based on the higher threshold. This makes life extremely hard for everyone, not least of all in a subject that is as skill based as yours. By looking at the key stage 3 results you might know very well that this student is a borderline 4/5 student who suddenly has been given a target of a grade 9 by the school. This is tough on you and is going to create stress, so you have to play clever, not work harder and not lose your cool. 

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Scream, shout and go mental before you pick yourself off the floor and get a grip! Don't say, "This is shocking" and feel sorry for yourself, say, OK, How am I going to get these grades? What strategies can I use? What projects can I plan that will get them motivated and tuned in? Can I use a more digital, photographic approach that doesn't need as much realistic drawing skills? How about taking conceptual approaches? After all, if the student has a grade 9 target, it’s because they have exceptional literacy skills, and so, if they don’t have traditional fine motor skills then you have to take a conceptual approach to making art. There’s nowhere in the GCSE Specification that says they have to have realistic drawing skills. Be positive and strong and try to see that it is POSSIBLE not IMPOSSIBLE. 

 

The GCSE sketchbook 

"Many students come to us with sketchbooks which are more like “presentation books” rather than a real record of their exploration, or a source of personal visual reference. The emphasis on good presentation means that students often have to un-learn habits they have developed before coming to university, such as decorating pages, and making elaborate backgrounds and titles, rather than focusing on first-hand visual research, developing and working up their ideas, which is what is required on a foundation course. 

Carl Silvester, Art Course coordinator Loughborough University

 

Perhaps more than any other part of the GCSE course, the sketchbook defines the final grade. These days, with outcome quite low in the assessment weighting, student’s sketchbooks and the process they reveal is of paramount importance. As I’ve mentioned earlier, low ability students leave lots of gaps and spaces in their books, they destroy work and are afraid of making mistakes. You need to be able to identify early on, who is a natural sketchbook worker and who isn’t. 

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Most high ability students will learn from each other, they will look at each other’s sketchbook’s and want to emulate them. So if you show them the standard they need to reach, through practical examples, they will go for it. It is your middle to low students who need more of your expertise. You need to teach them how to set out a sketchbook, using composition and space effectively, making each page count, annotating informatively and combining ideas with relevant studies of other artists work. This should NOT be left until year 10 to teach, but should be integral to your Key Stage 3 Curriculum, so that when they start their GCSE they just need a reminder. Some tips: 

1. Fill all pages, so that each turn of the page reveals something new and interesting. 

2. Include observational drawing in a variety of materials, if these aren’t part of the sketchbook then rip them out and stick them in. 

3. Make strong use of collage techniques, overlapping digital photography prints with materials, fabric, found items and text. 

4. Use a variety of prepared grounds such as coffee staining, inks, char- coals, ripped papers and textures. Then draw on top or stick ripped out drawings over. 

5. Don’t make the headings the focal point. Students have a bad habit of spending all lesson colouring a heading or a background, wasting time. 

6. Most annotation is dreadful. There’s no point writing useless, obvious information. Your students should have been taught how to annotate, what to write, how to use the formal elements fluently and most importantly, how to emphasise their coverage of the assessment objectives with annotation. Add the annotation afterwards if you have to and do it in small groups. 

7. If the final sketchbook is not good then consider cutting or ripping it up and mounting it on single sheets. Be aware that students are usually awful at cutting things out and tearing, ripping is often much more effective.

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