英语论文网

ents. Providing grades promotes a culture of comparison where students essentially compete with each other to see who gets the best mark. When grades and comments are combined, pupils will rarely look at the comments and instead focus on the grades (Black et al, 2002).

Pupils have different attitudes to learning and different perceptions of how much they can learn. Pupils can be grouped into two broad categories (Dweck, 2006). Those with a fixed mindset who believe their intelligence level is set and those with a growth mindset who believe that success is based on effort. With children who have a fixed mindset, the use of grades helps to reinforce their belief that they are performing as expected and that the grade is a ceiling that they can never rise above. Low achieving pupils who consistently get their 'expected' score are not motivated to improve themselves.

On the other hand providing comments without a grade means that pupils have to read the comments if they want to get an idea of their level of performance. .The problem with comment only marking is that the British education system is permeated with the need to provide levels and grades for students. From national league tables down to school reports, policy requires students to have grades. Grading has become part of our culture and students can become dissatisfied if they do not receive one. As part of the KMOFAP project, students were interviewed about what could be done to make them pay more attention to comments (Black et al, 2002). They gave a clear message that they would like to see teachers not write in red pen and to give legible statements that could be understood. Short comments about presentation of work rarely lead to an improvement. Comments need to focus on what has been achieved and what needs to be done next.

Peer-assessment and self-assessment by students

In order to reach the learning outcome for a lesson pupils need to be able to use self-assessment. This is not only to decide if they have met the required goal but also if they have failed to meet that goal what changes or improvements they need to make to reach the goal. Pupils need to be able to break a topic down into several smaller manageable goals. One of the teachers in the KMOFAP project (Black et al, 2003, p. 49) summarised what we are trying to get pupils to do:

Peer-assessment is a very useful tool to help pupils build up their own self-assessment skills. By marking each others work pupils are better able to judge their own progress and they should be motivated to participate since they know their own friends will be looking at their work. A discussion about the work can also be useful as pupils will use common language with each other and are often more accepting of criticism from their peers.

A typical method (Gardner, 2006) of pupil self-assessment is the use of traffic lights. Pupils mark each piece of work with either red (totally unsure), amber (unsure) or green (confident). Since this information is recorded in the pupils books, or on the worksheet, it is not obvious to the rest of the class. Hence pupils are less likely to face peer pressure to conform. However, from the data the teacher is able to determine how well the class has followed the current topics. This approach can be easily adapted to work with pupils writing smiley faces in their exercise books i本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。