Pic Collage Assessments

It's about a year ago that we posted the following Tweet:

Based on an idea via @ICT_MrP - Using Pic Collage app for peer assessment: pic.twitter.com/y5mbz9BniD

— PrimaryIdeas (@PrimaryIdeas) November 26, 2014

We've continued to use this and recently realised we'd not added a blog post about the idea. So, here is is. 

The idea came from reading a Tweet from Lee. Here's what we've done: Children complete their work, or at a point in their work, or at the end, and they take a photograph of it. Then, they pass the tablet containing the photo of their work to a peer, who can offer feedback directly onto the photo in Pic Collage. This could also be done as a self assessment or by an adult. 

The key element of this is that the annotations can be placed directly onto the photograph of the work. In our classrooms, this has proven to be an engaging task for the peer undertaking the assessment and a useful form of feedback for the pupil receiving it back.

Tablets, apps, fonts and colours all add to the engagement and many pupils write more and more useful feedback as a result. Some like to call it 'Camouflaged Learning'.

Time for Feedback

What's had the biggest impact in my classroom so far this year? Providing a timetabelled feedback session, that's what.

Last year, a year group at my school ran 'Feedback Friday' each week and I've now taken that into my own practice. On a Friday, between 11:20 and 11:50, my class have our 'Feedback Friday' sessions. 

Here's what we do:

- all the books are out on the tables;

- children have red pens and coloured pencils (see this blog post for more information on that);

- children review the work from that week that has been marked and act upon the feedback provided to them.

- if all the feedback has been acted upon, children look at their work and independently look for ways in which their work may be improved.

At the time of writing, we have had five of these sessions. It's not been as straight forward as outlined above: the children have needed coaching and guiding through responding to feedback. Each time I have directed children, as a whole or individually, to a particular piece that they should begin with and then allowed them to look at other books or items of work.

Of course, lessons during the week still have elements of looking at previous work and learning from feedback, but having the Friday session means that I know there's a dedicated half an hour slot in the timetable for children to look at the feedback provided and act upon what has been identified. It's also great to see children looking for and finding ways in which they can improve their own work as they revisit it.

Underlining Self Assessment

I've been doing this for about a year now and it's been working quite well.

When the children put their date and title on their work they underline the title with either green, orange or red pencil. This is to show how confident they are feeling at the start of the lesson:

- Green, I'm confident and could help others,

- Orange, I'm not quite sure, but I think I understand some of this,

- Red, Stop, I need help.

The children then underline in a colour at the end of the lesson so that there is a record of their feeling from the start and then end. Sometimes children go from red or orange to green, sometimes the other way around and then there are the times when both underlines are in the same colour...

The idea came from @rm8236.

Sum up your learning for me...

At the end of a lesson it's useful to find out what children have learned during the time spent in that lesson. Here are some ideas for doing that:

1. Sum up this lesson in a Tweet. Ask the children to explain their learning from the lesson in 140 characters or less. This means the children need to be concise about what they write. These could then be added to a school or class Twitter account too.

2. Sum up your learning as a text message. Again requiring the children to be concise, but this time giving them 160 characters to work with.

3. Sum up your learning in 3 words. Give the children a word limit to explain their learning. Again requiring them to think carefully about their description.

4. Exit Polls. Give the children a question or task to complete on a slip of paper that they can put in a box as they leave the room.

5. Draw me a picture of what you learned today. Giving the children the opportunity to explain their learning in a different way.

6. Write down the 3 Key words from today's lesson. Could be particularly useful in science, maths or other lessons with subject specific vocabulary.

Just some ideas we've been trying recently that the children have enjoyed and have been a bit different to what we've tried in the past. We'd love to have some comments below offering other ideas you've used.