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Listen
Assessment of Achievement Programme
Report of the First AAP Survey of Social Subjects Enquiry Skills (2002)
Appendix E: Guidance prepared for field officers conducting interviews
One to one discussion
Additional notes ('Weather' task)
Pictures can provide an effective medium for promoting discussion and reflection if the questioning encourages interpretation of the pictorial information. Pictures provide a meaningful context for pupils to reflect on what they know. Effective questioning will encourage pupils to reflect on how they know something.
Questioning should invite conversational dialogue, where pupils feel that what they say is important to the teacher. Beginning a question with ' Tell me' is more an invitation than interrogation.
Supplementary questions beginning ' How did you know that...' are found to be effective in eliciting further information. Pupils may use prior knowledge to make meaning of the picture and effective questioning can help pupils reflect and build on this knowledge. Effective questioning teaches, as well as elicits information.
Assessors need time to look at the photographs and the main questions in order to contemplate how the questions might be asked, and to consider supplementary questions that may be used to provoke further response.
Points on Implementation
A basic introduction will be required. This could involve asking pupils to tell you about their current project in school. A simple 'Tell me about the project you are studying in your class just now and what kind of things you have been doing'.
Ask the pupils if they have ever looked at pictures or photographs when they were learning about a new topic.
Tell them that we can learn a lot from looking at a picture or a photograph.
Introduce the photograph and say that it might be useful if you were doing a project on Weather
There is a difference between rewording a question and prompting. You may choose to reword a question if you feel that the language is presenting a barrier to the pupil answering. Examples of rewording are shown below. Rewording should not prevent a pupil being awarded a 1. Prompting is providing a degree of support in order to bring the pupil closer to a response. It may require giving part of the response eg a key word in question 4. If the pupil goes on to provide another 3 correct key words then a 2 can be awarded. If only the pupil then supplies one or two key words, then a 3 would be awarded.
Suggested Rewording - Remember to invite dialogue
- Q1 Tell me what you can see in this photograph ('how do you know that…' at this stage will help activate prior knowledge of content and, importantly, learning experiences)
- Q2 Have a close look and tell me one thing you wished you knew more about.
- Q2b If you were to take this photograph up to your teacher just now, what question would you ask her/him?
- Q3 If you were doing a project on weather in your class, what are the places you could go to get information?
- Q4 If you went to an Encyclopaedia to find out more about this picture, tell me 4 words you think would be worth looking up.
- Q5 What kind of books would I use to find out more about weather?
- Q6 Establish whether the pupil has used the internet to look for information
- Q7 Establish clearly what you mean by resources
- Q8 'How would you help someone…' Use 'looking for information', 'writing down information' establish what you mean by 'using information'.uce the photograph
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