This is Dylan Wiliam's first strategy for Assessment for Learning. Assessment for Learning or formative assessment has been the centre of my thinking this year to improve learning outcomes for students. These videos have been great for helping me understand the importance of formative assessment and been terrific as guidance to implement into my teaching practice.
Although I have thought that learning intentions are central to my planning I realise that is not always the case. My class is able to do certain tasks which I know will help the learning intention. However, I am not always sharing the LI as I should or ensuring it is clear and understood.
Yesterday, I had two terrific lessons which I attribute to clearly beginning with a learning intention, co-construcing a success criteria and then frequently referring to this success criteria throughout the lesson, applying feedback and questioning to it.
One of these lessons just happened to turn into a walkthrough observation from my principal. Hence, the students were able to talk about their learning. On previous walkthroughs my principal has observed that students know what they should be doing but this is often task based rather than learning based. Needless to say I was extremely happy that students were able to articulate their understanding of the learning intention to her.
