In a lesson on developments in farming and technology in the Iron Age, the teacher used a series of short questions to check whether pupils had understood key developments. Pupils wrote their answers on whiteboards, and the teachers checked that all pupils were secure in this knowledge. This enabled them to pick up gaps and misconceptions and address them quickly.
In a few schools, teachers returned to important content and concepts regularly, to check that pupils’ knowledge of these remained secure.
Poor practice
Teachers identified evidence of broad history ‘skills’, such as ‘asking historical questions’ or ‘using more than one source of evidence’, but they did not consider whether pupils had secure knowledge of what they had learned. This often led to teachers giving pupils vague or imprecise feedback on their work.
What sort of indicators should we be looking for when assessing?
Teachers could monitor how their pupils use
