How would you assess your students’ learning if you weren’t limited by the demands of the national curriculum?

How would you assess your students’ learning if you weren’t limited by the demands of the national curriculum?

If I wasn’t limited by the demands of the national curriculum I would understand assessment as a part of the teaching and learning process. I would introduce useful and frequent way to assess. Especially I would value practical works in which children would dray, write, compose; in short, create.  

For this reason, it would be necessary self and pair assessment because I would be interested in skills development. So students should know the learning outcomes, identify their progress and the degree of acquisition of them. To do this, I would take into account the individual differences and I would adapt the process to the each child’s possibilities.

Moreover, they must develop metacognitive skills to provide clear evidence of attainment focused on real performance. The teacher, as a guide, should facilitate their understanding of nuclear concepts and problem solving by providing the information and the materials in different formats and related to real life. Students should learn useful and practical things. Teacher must provide feedback and key information to enable students to improve.

Futhermore, I would maximize opportunities and experiences to learn from each other by systematically observing and valuing teamwork. I would assess different ways of working and, of course, not only the result. In my opinion it is more interest and beneficial to value attitudes like effort, perseverance, generosity, empathy and overcoming. Even more, if we consider that the final goal of education is the harmonious and balanced development of the child.

Finally, I would encourage students to contribute to planning the teaching and learning process. Usually, schools in Singapore and Finland understand education as well. That is, a student is able to achieve something depending on how the challenge is presented, his/her attitude and the aid provided. But no one fails because there are open ended challenging tasks.