Are Levels Limiting?

Which is better?

Working towards pre-conceived levels, bands and assessment criteria (extrinsic/dubious motivation) or getting students to conceive their own (intrinsic motivation)?

Which is better?
Giving students assessment criteria which is set by an anonymous agency or letting them invent their own, powered by their own imagination?

Which is better?
Working towards levels, which stop at 8; and bands which stop at 5; or students creating their own "hit list", which stops at infinity?

There's only one way to find out!


Case study:
After a run of lessons studying listening skills (a la Robert Fisher-"Creative Dialogue in the Classroom"), a year 10 group came up with the following success criteria for listening:

• body language: nodding, leaning forward, eye-contact
• following the maxims of respect, politeness, no interruption, equity, collaboration not competition
• paraphrasing the question in the answer
• sign-posting the person's name you are responding to; and the point they raised
• responding to points made 5 minutes earlier to demonstrate close attention
• using a variety of Bloom's higher order questions; using different question openers to those used previously
• giving close evidence to refute or agree with the point raised
• being aware of others wishing to join the discussion, and inviting them in
• using connectives to counter-argue
• feeling that close listening is difficult, and the thunk of your brain!

And so on. Much more subtle and sophisticated than the speaking & listening criteria stipulated by the exam board.

The interesting thing was, after taking part in a wonderful, collaborative, skilful Socratic debate, the same year 10 class were highly critical of their performance! They raised points such as the discussion being dominated by the more confident ones; and wondered how to solve this. They wanted to do even better!

Case Study:

After much practice exploring poetry orally, the same year 10 class were ready to write a comparative essay.

As before, they came up with their "hit list" of success criteria:

• PEE (yawn)
• asking a range of Bloom's higher order questions
• offering a range of possibilities; using "could be" language
• giving close evidence
• bringing in poets' lives
• making links and connections between other texts; and within the poems
• knowing the "big picture" - context
• exploring character/view-point, theme, structure, language
• less is more: exploring interesting points thoroughly
• enjambment
• internal rhyme/assonance/sibilance - they'd just learnt the last terms so wanted to show off they'd remembered the words!
• SSPs - not sure about this in a reading exam, but they wanted to, so why not?

Then they started to write.

Haven't marked the results yet, but they'll peer assess against their hit list first; and here's hoping for writing which is fresh, original, honest and different - maybe even "sophisticated" and "impressive"!