Supporting Student Evaluation

Lots of schools build in review or feedback lessons. Those lessons at the end of a topic where students get to revise a topic that they didn't do too well on and require some extra help? Yep, those are the ones!

They are incredibly difficult to do well, which is why we have produced our template to support you in developing the most Metacognitive review lesson possible

Wrappers are an incredibly useful tool that support students in identifying their weaknesses and areas of improvement. Through evaluating the work they have done, and answering specific evaluation questions, wrappers allow students to produce goals for future work based upon accurate evaluation of prior attempts.

Furthermore, because students fill in a wrapper with their own opinions, they cannot quabble with the outcomes! Often as teacher we tell students to read more carefully so that they don't lose marks. When it comes from us, this advice is often dismissed. When this is highlighted by a wrapper, students cannot quibble!

Finally, wrappers inform future planning, and remove some of our marking workload. Therefore, wrappers are a three-in-one solution to a lot of our tasks: marking and feedback; evaluation; planning.

Below you will find templates that can be amended to suit exam papers, for any subject and any length, as well as wrappers appropriate for homework. Again, these suit any length homework and any subject. These are both available to edit so you can make them suit your task! 

PMI grids - positive, minus, interesting - is a great way for students to evaluate a lesson, block of learning or outcome activity (such as a task, problem or exam question).

The PMI grid available below to download has been amended to also include a future goals section. Students can thus reflect on the minus of the activity or learning, and decide what their goals are for future learning.

This takes a tool that only supports student evaluation, to one that also supports students planning and goal setting (self-regulation).

The PMI grid can also be edited, so feel free to change it to support your students, lessons and subjects however you see fit. 

Research shows that if student's record their learning progress, including their strengths and weaknesses, it can support future progress and attainment.

One of the best ways to do this is through using Learning Diaries. These are primarily useful for Primary Schools, but also useful for Secondary Schools. These learning diaries allow students to reflect on their recent learning, consider what they were successful at, areas with which they struggled, and how they will address these struggles in future. It also provides students with a section to determine their goals and targets for future learning.

These diaries can be used in a variety of ways, including (but not exclusive to):

• Evaluating each lesson for each different subject.
• Evaluating key pieces of work for different subject e.g. end of term assessments.
• Evaluating a days learning across all subjects.
• Evaluating specific tasks such as group working or independent working.

These diaries can be amended so that you can make them suit your class. They can be printed into a booklet, or individually and handed out on an ad-hoc basis.