QTS Q11 – Timothy West

Marking pupils work GCSE OCR Nationals

By adminPGCE, POT 312 Comments

I have been marking some OCR nationals GCSE coursework over the last 2 days, which has been a great chance to learn more about the course and the way that it is delivered.

The school use a really great method for monitoring the work and recoding it through access program call JAS. The Head of IT has developed a series of queries that put the work into a database that can be viewed in excel.

The process for the pupils is to submit their work to the Joint Assessment System

Then me as a teacher can print out all the levels and then goes into each pupil and clicks on the work that needs to be assessed. Once I have given it the correct grade that I feel it deserves I then put a grade and a comment for any improvements that could be made to actually increase their grade before it is submitted.

The process is made simple once you get into a rhythm and once you master the nuances of the program. It takes a total of about 5 minutes per piece of work. The hardest part is when you have to make a judgment call on quality of the PowerPoint slides.

Once pupils then receive their work back then they can make the edits to it and view what each module needs to working on.

Above and below is an example of som work that I have marked with reference to the powerpoint that they where creating.

Below is an example of the tracking and monitoring that this program achieves and helps with.

Bellow is an example of the class that have been teaching and the results that they have achieved.

20/05/2011

Year 11 GCSE Coursework Lessons

By adminObservations, PGCE, POT 2, Reflection, TeachingNo Comments

Working with year 11 Course work

I have been team teaching year 11 coursework lessons that are a completely different approach to normal guided teaching. The first thing is that they are all working away on their own documents and so they are all at different levels this means that you have to initially be familiar with the actual coursework requirements and structure. I have been spending the time reading through the Candidate booklet and familiarizing myself with what exactly the pupils have to do.

The pupils here are KES are doing the AQA syllabus and have to create two tasks

1) Set up a website for the driving school.

2) Set up a system to manage driving lessons and provide a link to it on the website.

So currently as they are on the old spec they are allowed to have a pre made template with headings and guidelines. They then have to do the following to create the project and then write it up in this format.

There is an analysis section that applies to both (10 marks)

Then they have to do a write up on each of these areas below

Design (20 Marks)

Implementation (40 Marks)

Testing (10 Marks)

Self Evaluation (8 Marks)

Report (6 Marks)

Evaluation of others use of ICT (6)

Total (100)

Currently the pupils I have joined are at a stage where they should have completed a preliminary stage of each of these areas some of them are at varying levels and have created a comprehensive report and others are quite far behind for example one pupil has almost finished with a 250 page report and another has still not completed making his website.

They key to helping out in a course work lesson is to be able answer questions that arise swiftly in a ‘get in get out fashion’. The way to be able to offer this assistance is to have a solid understanding of the exam board and the mark scheme so that you know exactly what is required.

I have already been looking through some of their work that they have been handing in at intervals and I have made corrections to the work. This is another way of getting to grips with the mark scheme and what they have to do to achieve the higher grades. This interval hand is a big demand on the teacher but is vital to offer

Here at KES there is a high demand to do well with most pupils aiming at the A-A* grade which means that you have to be really stringent when it comes to the actual mark scheme. This is obviously way above the national average that most state schools would achieve but is a good standard to reach and push to if I was to work in a State School.

11/03/2011

Year 8 Website Assessments

By adminPGCE, POT 1, Reflection, TeachingNo Comments

For my year 8 Website unit i used a range of assessment strategies

The first step was to use the QCDA national curriculum assessment criteria and amend the criteria so that the Kids know what level they where at.

We then took two revisions of this

Revison 1 = http://bit.ly/h9eb9V

Revision 2 = http://bit.ly/dFMTcN this was so that the kids could understand it better and there where all condensed into one sentence

I worked collaboratively with the ICTAC ICT across the curriculum teacher to amend these for all year 8 teachers.

Prior to my last lesson I arranged for them to do a series of peer assessments to make sure that their websites met the different requirements for them to achieve the highest level possible. Lesson plan here http://bit.ly/hEfz8X

Then for my last assement lesson, lesson plan here http://bit.ly/hbYC3P

Full Reflection on Lesson below

Year 8 Website Assessments

It has come to the end of the module and it is time to mark and assess the year 8 websites they have been makings.

The idea was to get them to prepare a short 2 minute presentation about their website to cover the assessment levels.

How we have done this

They have zipped up their whole folder containing their website and then they submitted this folder to the Joint assessment system so that I could access this through the teacher login.

This submission allowed me to access it for their presentations and viewing later.

Once it was submitted I then asked them to come up to the front with their chairs and gave them some tips on how to present well. These were things like to face the front, speak up, keep it simple, and introduce their website.

I also laid down the ground rules of no talking when someone is talking and no distracting the presenter.

I mentioned that I will be asking them some questions.

? What sort of design theme and colour scheme have your chosen and why?

? How have you made sure that your website is suitable to a range of audiences?

? If you did it again what improvements would you make?

How we did it.

I had to open up the zipped up work through the JAS and then show the website on the screen and at this point the pupil went through the website.

The as they go through it the point was to asses their work straight into the JAS this could be done easily with 2 people but I think would be hard with one person.

So the presentation really gave a good opportunity for the pupil to talk through their work and for you to see their thoughts on how they made it.

Problems

Behaviour wise it’s quite hard to manage them with your back turned to them!

The can sometimes go over board with clapping. A good suggestion from my mentor was to say that if you carry on clapping then you will be held back a minute for every clap that you do. So its almost letting them police it as they not all will want to stay behind. Then if I catch the culprits then I can keep them in.

The lower sets sometimes don’t elaborate enough at the beginning and don’t have a good introduction and jump straight into their classroom.

The good thing about assesimg the pupils through the JAS System is that you can then set objectices to cover the points that have not been covered as well as you would hav liked. The JAS systme allows you to quickly observe handed in work and then offer feedback and say what needs to be improved.

15/12/2010