Institution: The Weald School

Context
The Weald is a co-educational and mixed comprehensive school in West Sussex for students aged 11 to 18.

The students featured in the lesson are a top set Year 10 GCSE group. They started Spanish in Year 8 with only three lessons a fortnight and went on studying it in Year 9 for four lessons a fortnight. Now in Year 10 they have five lessons a fortnight , rising to six lessons a fortnight in Year 11.

Key objectives
To use assessment for learning to make students aware of how to attain the highest grades in GCSE speaking. 

How the lesson was organised
The students featured in the lesson are a top set Year 10 GCSE group. They started Spanish in Year 8 with only three lessons a fortnight and went on studying it in Year 9 for four lessons a fortnight. Now in Year 10 they are doing five lessons a fortnight and will do six lessons a fortnight in Year 11. The lesson in question related to the topic area of Leisure which is the topic they are preparing for their coursework and speaking test at GCSE.

• The class has been taught in previous lessons how to use a range of tenses when having a conversation on the topic of leisure. They had created their own PowerPoint presentations in groups for homework and put these on the school’s virtual learning environment. The presentations included examples of present, preterite, imperfect and near future tenses. Sample presentation (ppt, 1.75MB).
• The students then created a group role play by writing a script (doc, 23KB) which they practised and video-filmed again as a homework task. These videos were projected on the whiteboard during the lesson.
• Each group video was shown in turn and the students were provided with an Edexcel mark scheme (pdf, 577KB) which they used in groups to assess their own videos and the videos produced by their peers.
• As a homework task, the group then worked upon improving their scripts, based on the feedback they had received from the class. Download the improved script (doc, 22KB).

Results/effect
By having a copy of all Edexcel mark schemes (both for coursework and for the oral examination), all students know exactly what is expected of them to achieve top grades in Spanish. The results of their GCSE Spanish exam will be received in 2009 and at that point it will be possible to evaluate the success of assessment for learning.

Future developments
Assessment for learning is part of the learning to learn strategy. It shows students how to progress at all levels and how to take responsibility for their own work and to become more independent. This will be incorporated into teaching more and more over the coming years.

'We thought it was a great experience because we actually discovered how much we know by putting it into practice. Also, we had the freedom to say what we wanted to and create something imaginative and fun. We enjoyed getting the chance to work together as a group because we were able to put all our ideas together to come up with a far better PowerPoint and video than we would have been able to do by ourselves'. Las chicas superpoderosas (one of the groups in the class)

Author: Brigitte Holt, Head of Spanish, The Weald Community School and Sixth Form

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