Character in Assessment

Our final Teaching & Learning meeting of the year centred around the topic Character within Assessment.

The importance of character is seen not only in school but also in the work place. Businesses place emphasis on certain qualities they desire in a successful candidate but the development of these begins at school. This is not a new idea. The question is however, how do we instil them within our students?

We began the academic year by looking at Character Education from the work and ideas presented by the Jubilee Centre and then ended the school year by assessing the importance and impact character can have on assessment and how we can embed it on an individual level, subject level and across our reporting structure.

• Take Away! = Student-led character target setting 1. Start your year by asking the students to identify what moral and civic characteristics (see ppt for list) are most relevant to your subject. For example, tolerance in RS or perseverance in Maths. What type of learner do we want to be developing in each of our subjects? Allow them to take some ownership over that. 2. Get the students to set a target of how they are going to achieve/develop those characteristics over the year. For example, ensuring they research and provide a variety of viewpoints and opinions in their first debate style essay in RS. 3. Review these targets periodically over the term by getting the students to re-address/set new targets if achieved. If you teach two classes in the same year group, why not try this with one group and compare the results with the other to help measure the impact.

We are lucky enough to have Professor Bill Lucas Director of the Centre for Real-World learning based at Winchester University coming in to speak on our September INSET. He is the founder of the Expansive Education Network and has written a number of books including Educating Ruby. We are delighted that he is running a session on instilling positive characteristics in pupils and how this can be undertaken through Action Research.

Here is to another exciting and busy year of Teaching and Learning at Putney High School.