Assessment for Learning: Putting It into Practice

I am a Clinical Teacher in a hospital. Reading this book about secondary education transformed my whole approach to teaching and learning. Gone are all those boring PowerPoints, replaced with a couple of smart questions, some protected stress free thinking time, and then off into lively discussions and debates. Pages 32 to 41 on questioning are worth the price of the whole book. I could go on and on, but just buy the book and persevere!

This is an excellent book for teachers and administrators who have are unfamiliar with the work of Paul Black, Dylan Wiliam, et. al. The book sums up the extensive review of the literature and research on assessment for learning and the work of the Kings Medway Formative Assessment Project who have been trialing a variety of ways to carry out formative assessment in the classroom. The book is grounded in the realistic. It explains carefully how formative assessment can improve pupils' learning and then provides case studies to show how it can be managed in the classroom context. The only down side to this book is that if you have already read much of Black and Wiliam's papers on this subject then this will provide little that is new, although even then it does summarise the earlier papers into an easily readable format. This book is a must have for anyone who is concerned with raising standards in education.