Assessment and Computing - A Practical Guide to Teaching Computing and ICT in the Secondary School - page 84

c) Annual report
Purpose: to provide an annual summary of overall attainment and progress.

1 For each pupil, refer to the complete portfolio of their work.

2 Decide the overall level of attainment, using the Programme of Study as the

benchmark.

3 Summarise the comments made about the pupil's progress in Computing

during the year.

Some schools have a policy of recording/reporting 'effort' as well as 'attainment'
in the annual report, and this has implications for record keeping at project and
lesson level. You will need to judge how much effort each pupil is making, using
the guidance provided by the school. There is a direct connection between effort
and motivation, and you must ensure that there is enough challenge for all pupils
to remain engaged and demonstrate effort.

Assessing group work
It is questionable, even where the resources exist, whether all work should be
undertaken by individuals at their own computer. Social constructivist models of
learning ( see, for example, Capel, Leask and Turner, 2013, Unit 5.1; or Hramiak and
Hudson, 2011, Chapter 13) suggest that working together in a group is beneficial to
the learning of each individual. Teamwork is also a key skill, and in Computing it
allows opportunities for the final product to be far better than anything that could
be produced by a solo user.
However, there are challenges in assessing an individual's contribution to a
group. One strategy would be to have some individual reflective component that
can be used to validate group contribution. This is a sophisticated concept but not
beyond most young people. Indeed, considerable success has been made where
learners are asked to comment on the work of their peers as part of the recording
process.

Portfolios
A portfolio, containing examples of pupils' activities, can provide useful evidence
for formative and summative assessment. It is essential that it is identified in your
planning, and records how this evidence will be used and against which criteria it
will be measured. Many younger and less-able learners will need support in
developing the skills needed to identify what should be included in a portfolio, and
how it might be annotated.

Task 4.8

Portfolio
From your experiences, note down what might be included in a typical portfolio
of evidence for assessing performance at the end of KS3 in Computing.