3 Little Pigs...and 4 Big Assessment Objectives

Following on from our last Coach/ouch session and discussions we've had as a department following some recent observations, we decided to try and make it easier for our Year 12 students to access higher marks by teaching them more explicitly about assessment objectives. This is something we have done in the past but have changed the way we do it slightly this year so that they can understand the concepts in a non-subject specific manner.

In A-Level Economics there are 4 different assessment objectives:

• A01 - knowledge and understanding
• A02 - application
• A03 - analysis
• A04 - evaluation

In order for our students to access the top grades they need to be able to hit all of these assessment objectives confidently. We made them apply these skills to the '3 Little Pigs' story getting them to write questions which would directly test each assessment objective. I think this activity has really helped the majority of them grasp how each assessment objective works and now gives us a common language to use in all lessons when looking at any question in class e.g. "What A0 would this question relate to? Can anyone give me an A03 question about opportunity costs?"

A01- how many pigs were in the story?
A02 - Identify and explain two factors of production that the 3 little pigs used to build their houses
A03 - Explain why the wolf was unable to blow the 3rd little pig's house down.
A04 - To what extent were the tactics used by the wolf effective in capturing the 3 little pigs?

By having this common understanding about how they are assessed, I'm hoping this will help us to in our quest to provide some support at the bottom whilst still offering some stretch at the top.

If you want to know more about how we actually used it in the lesson or want to see some of the resources, just send me an email.

Better still, come along to the next Coach/ouch session and share some of your best practice.