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Assessment for Learning: Formative Assessment in Science and Maths Teaching Course - National STEM Learning Centre

Learn to use evidence-based approaches to formative assessment to develop your responsiveness and improve your teaching skills.

Create a formative classroom and transform your students’ learning

This teacher CPD ExpertTrack will enable you to embed assessment for learning into your classroom. The approaches in this series of courses offer a path to becoming a more responsive teacher in science and maths.

Upon completion, you’ll be equipped with the knowledge and tools to assess student understanding, clarify their goals and progress their learning.

This ExpertTrack is co-authored by experienced educators and leading researchers in the field; Professor Dylan Wiliam, Professor Chris Harrison and Dr Andrea Mapplebeck, in partnership with STEM Learning.

Deepen your understanding of assessment for learning

Getting the most from your students requires you to fully understand their progress. The first course in this ExpertTrack is Introducing Assessment for Learning. It will teach you about the underpinning philosophy of assessment for learning, and you’ll develop your use of hinge-point questions to elicit evidence from students. You will also learn how to plan for diagnostic questions to infer student understanding.

Build lesson plans that reflect your students’ goals

The second part of this ExpertTrack is Planning for Learning. You’ll learn how to plan lessons to identify your students’ thinking and clarify their learning goals. You’ll then learn how to improve learning outcomes by clearly identifying your students’ thinking, clarifying learning goals and progressing your students’ understanding.

Turn your learning into practical steps

In the final course, Feedback for Learning, you’ll implement formative assessment strategies and develop your use of feedback. You’ll get to grips with developing a classroom culture that prepares students to get the most from your feedback.

Throughout these courses, you’ll be given examples from real classrooms, and interviews with teachers who have implemented formative assessment. You’ll collaborate with other teachers in discussions and undertake planning activities for your own teaching context.

Key skills you will learn

• Formative Assessment
• Teaching Skills
• Science Teaching
• Mathematics Teaching
• Assessment for Learning
• Planning Teaching

Learning outcomes

By the end of the ExpertTrack, you’ll be able to:

• Develop a formative classroom culture that encourages dialogue, enables you to identify and address misconceptions, and prepares your students to be receptive and responsive to feedback.
• Identify your students’ starting points and how to plan to move their learning forward successfully through the use of learning intentions and success criteria.
• Demonstrate a range of approaches to elicit evidence of student understanding, including the use of hinge-point questions and classroom talk, enabling you to respond to your students and adapt your teaching during and between lessons.
• Develop a range of approaches to involve students in oral and written feedback to progress their learning.
• Reflect on your practice of assessment for learning through self-evaluation, student voice and colleague feedback, to continue to develop your use of formative assessment to progress student learning.
• Collaborate with other educators and colleagues to try out activities and share thinking, in order to develop your teaching practice.

ExpertTrack course overview

• Introducing Assessment for Learning
  Develop your responsiveness as a teacher: learn how to assess student understanding and tailor lessons to improve learning.
• Planning for Learning: Formative Assessment
  Develop the way you use evidence of student understanding to inform your teaching and enable learning during and across lessons.
• Feedback for Learning: Implementing Formative Assessment
  Learn how to give pupil feedback through formative assessment that supports student learning without increasing your workload.

How ExpertTracks work

Join an ExpertTrack to master new skills in your chosen specialist area. Work through a series of topic-focused courses at your own pace, and pass the final assessment to earn a digital certificate award that proves your expertise.

Who will you learn with?

World-class learning with

National STEM Learning Centre

The National STEM Learning Centre provides world-class professional development activities and resources to support the teaching of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects.

Start learning today - free 7-day trial

After your free trial you can:

• Pay $39 per month to keep learning online
• Have complete control over your subscription; you can cancel any time
• Work at your own pace and set your own deadlines at every stage
• Only pay while you’re learning; the subscription will cancel automatically when you finish
• Complete online assessments to test your knowledge and prove your skills
• Earn digital course certificates and a final award that you can share online, with potential employers, and your professional network
• Keep access to the content of courses you complete even after your subscription ends