Self-assessment opens up success criteria.

It helps learners better understand what their work is being judged against.

What good looks like.

Opening up success criteria is one of the three pillars of effective assessment for learning.

Alongside eliciting and using information (so you can tailor your teaching to the learners in front of you) and giving formative feedback (so learners know what they need to do next to be successful).

Self-assessment has two parts.

First, learners must assess the work they have produced.

Second, they must use this assessment to identify what they have done well and what they can do to improve.

The area for improvement usually comes in the form of a target.

A goal the learner can pursue as their next steps.

Here are five ways you can help your learners develop high-quality targets for themselves as part of their self-assessments.

Create a Target Bank

A target bank is a list of pre-made targets from which learners can borrow.

For example, an English teacher might make a target bank for their Year 8 learners.

This consists of 20 generic targets the teacher knows are relevant to the age group and the curriculum.

When it comes to self-assessment, the teacher invites learners to use the target bank as a scaffold.

They can either take a target from the bank and modify it so it fits with their self-assessment, or they can use the target bank for inspiration to develop an original target.

If you head to the Assessment For Learning Knowledge Base, you’ll find a set of blogs I’ve written containing 200 pre-made targets.

You can use these as the basis of your own target bank, or as starting point for inspiration.

Develop a Target Tracker for Your Learners

Take an A4 sheet and divide it into three columns.

The first column is for the date.

The second column is for the learner’s target.

And the third column is for the teacher to sign-off when the learner has successfully met their target.

There’s a couple of points to note here.

First, when learners have a target tracker, they can use it to collate the targets they set themselves during self-assessments.

This means they are easy to access.

(For the learner and the teacher.)

Second, by collating self-assessment targets, learners can see whether they are making progress.

For example, a primary school teacher might get their Year 5 learners self-assessing in maths, and recording their targets in their target trackers.

It will quickly become apparent to a learner if they are setting themselves the same targets and, therefore, not making progress in their learning.

They can then ask for help in a timely manner, or the teacher can step in having seen this when they marked the books.

Turn a Mark-Scheme Into a Set of Targets

Give learners a mark-scheme that will be used to assess their work (by you or by an examiner).

Ask them to read the mark-scheme and to create a set of targets from it.

These targets should indicate what the learner needs to do to successfully master the mark-scheme.

Now, this isn’t easy.

But it is valuable.

To scaffold, you have a few options.

First, ask learners to do it in pairs or threes. This gives opportunities to discuss and to work collaboratively.

Second, give learners a section of a mark-scheme.

For example, a GCSE physics teacher might give their learners a mark-scheme for a six-mark question and ask them to work in pairs to turn this into a set of targets that, if achieved, will result in top marks.

Third, specify how many targets you want.

This removes a degree of ambiguity.

For example, an A Level psychology teacher might give their learners a section of a mark-scheme and ask them to turn it into three overarching targets.

Once learners have their targets, you can ask them to use these in their work.

In the physics example, the teacher would set learners a six-mark question and ask them to complete this with their targets on hand to guide them.

In the psychology example, the teacher might ask the learners to use their overarching targets when they write their next essay.

The point of the exercise is to both familiarise learners with the mark-scheme and to get them to create a target-based scaffold they can use to direct their future work.

Facilitate a Target-Setting Discussion

Ask learners to conduct a self-assessment.

You can use one of your go-to methods, or try one of the techniques explained in my Assessment for Learning Knowledge Base.

When learners have completed their self-assessments, including targets, ask them to get into pairs or groups of three.

Display the following questions on the bord:

• What target did you set for yourself and why?
• How do you think your target will help you improve?
• Are there any similarities and differences you can identify between your targets?

Learners use these questions as the basis of discussion.

With the first two, they take it turns to ask these to each other.

This means everyone has a chance to explain their targets (and, in the process, reflect on them).

The third question is for the group to discuss together.

It encourages analysis and often works well if you get learners to write their targets next to each other, on a mini-whiteboard or separate sheet of paper.

This makes the process of comparison more concrete and, therefore, easier.

Provide a Category and Let learners Set the Target

If a learner has a category, it is often easier for them to set a relevant, meaningful target.

For example:

• ‘OK, I’m really pleased with how you’ve all assessed the strengths of your work. Now I want you to come up with a target for improvement. And, because we’re focussing on persuasive writing this term, I want you to make your target something to do with using rhetorical techniques.’

Here, the teacher has identified a relevant category: Rhetorical Techniques.

They signal this to learners and then invite them to use it as the basis of their self-assessment target-setting.

This makes learners’ lives easier, by directing them to a single area of learning.

Now they only need to consider one thing when developing their target.

This strategy is particularly useful in a couple of specific circumstances.

First, and as exemplified above, is when you know the area of learning you want your class to focus on.

In our example, the teacher knows that everyone needs to improve their use of rhetorical techniques.

Instead of letting learners go off down many different paths, they choose to focus the self-assessment target-setting on what they’ve identified as being of greatest importance.

Second, if your learners struggle to set self-assessment targets, or find the process of target-setting challenging, providing a category on which to focus helps them target their efforts effectively.

Looked at in this way, providing a category is a form of scaffolding, making it easier for learners to engage with the task.