This was for KS3. I had a go, in February, at an oral assessment with my year 9s for the Holocaust. I used this blog post as my inspiration and Richard was kind enough to look over some of my class materials for me ahead of time. It went so well my HoD deemed my lesson outstanding, which was a nice feeling.

I repeated the experiment with year 8, to complete their Empire assessments last term. I ran it along the same lines – some students opted for the debate and some for the essay; the debate was a little more awkward than with the year 9s, as they were all a bit nervous. However, it worked well.

When I did the Holocaust assessment, I drafted in year 12 helpers who recorded the assessments on iPods and then I watched them back in my own time to check on the levels the students awarded; this time I supervised the debates personally and made notes on the students as I went. I was then left with the prospect of copying my notes long-hand into student books as feedback.

So, instead, I decided to use an iPod to give my feedback orally. I used my Diary Room cupboard to complete the recordings on an iPod, which I then passed around to students at the start of the next lesson. They had to listen to the feedback on earphones, and write in their books the level they go, what they did well and what they needed to do to improve.

This worked like a dream. The novelty of using the iPod meant that the students engaged with their feedback far better than if I had written it into their exercise books for them. I will definitely be doing this again in the future.

Here is one of the videos…now, you mustn’t tease. The name is written backwards. This is because when you’re filming forwards on an iPod, it films in mirror but converts to normal when you stop filming. I realised this AFTER I had filmed all the feedback. For each student, I painstakingly wrote their name on a mini whiteboard in mirror writing so that it would be readable on the recording. Utter technology #fail. The students found this hilarious.

(For some reason the synching is all out of kilter too, but hopefully you get the idea).