Give each learning experience a mark.
A core idea in these exercises is to give the children the sense that their learning is under their control. That what they know and the marks they get in tests are the direct result of how much effort they put in.
Put another way, learning is not something that just happens to them but is something that they are actively engaged in – their actions determine how much they learn.
To help give children this awareness children can be invited to give each piece of learning a mark out of 10. The mark is for the child to say how close she/he has got to learning everything possible from that situation.
Thus if the children are learning their four times table and they feel they can correctly answer every question related to the four times table up to 12 x 4 = then they have learned it completely, they can colour in the Learning grade with a gold award. If they have a small number wrong (perhaps getting 7, 8 or 9 right) they might give themselves a blue award, and if they have 4, 5, or 6 they might give themselves a brown or bronze colour award.
So the children are not asked to say how hard or easy the learning is – the question is, “did they learn what they were asked to learn?”
This is the first step in a journey to the moment when they have to take control of their own learning, and decide for themselves if they really know something or not. For the moment, every time they can write 10 as a learning mark, it is a reinforcement which is good for them.
And of course once they have got the idea of the process with very simple self-assessments, then the assessment can be for something more complicated.
Finally they are asked to grade themselves as whether they are “ready for the test”.
If they have got 9/10 or 10/10 they can write in “Ready”
If they have got 7 or 8 then the comment might be “Nearly ready”
For 5 or 6 the comment is “Not Yet Ready”
Anything less than five the comment could be, “Must do some more work”
The purpose of this little exercise is to emphasise that the amount that is learned determines what happens next – that is to say, the effort they put into their learning has real consequences in terms of what happens next.
Obviously the table can be simplified or expanded depending on the understanding of this approach by the pupils
| Date | Lesson | What was learned | Learning colour | Ready for the test? |
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