Primary and Early Years > Interest > Assessment

P45: Evaluating the contribution of Activote as a Formative Assessment Tool
Author: Julie Toothill Hartside Primary School
Date: 2005

Summary

Julie Toothill evaluates the use of a Classroom voting system. She makes the following observations:

Although children enjoy using Activote and treat it like a game, their results show that they are careful about their answers and want to get it right.

Where children chose to randomly select some of their answers, the total results were generally an accurate indication of their ability nevertheless. However, children with special educational needs (SEN) seem to under perform, consistently guessing answers and getting them wrong.

With the exception of SEN children, the children saw discussion of the results as a constructive and positive experience.

Julie concludes that the voting system is most useful when it is used as an assessment for learning and the children are motivated to use the results to inform and take responsibility for their future learning.

> Download this research: PDF - Microsoft Word

Primary and Early Years > Interest > Assessment

P56: Using ICT as a focus for self-assessment in Year 2 English lessons
Author: Sarah Sawyer, Furze Infant School
Date: 2006

Summary

Sarah discusses the use of Active Studio with an Active Slate to display pupils' work and highlight pieces of the work for discussion with the class. Sarah used the Active Studio classroom voting system to gain feedback from the class on their experiences. Using this feedback Sarah evaluates the successes of the project, and highlights some of the possible drawbacks.

Action

Sarah used Active Studio with a class of Year 2 English pupils, highlighting particularly good work in yellow and areas where improvement could be made in blue. Each pupil's work was discussed by the class. Using the voting system, the pupils were able to give their feedback anonymously to indicate their likes and dislikes about having their work displayed on the visualiser in this way.

Outcomes

The feedback from the pupils was generally positive, showing that most enjoyed having their work displayed to, and discussed by, the rest of the class. Some pupils however did not enjoy the experience, with one in particular finding it to be 'painful'. Sarah felt that overall this is a very useful tool, but that it should be used with caution and that pupils should be allowed to opt out of having their work displayed to their classmates.

> Download this research: PDF - Microsoft Word