Approaches to Learning and Assessment

We encourage students to take risks, give things a go and not be afraid to make mistakes. In Key Stage 3 we push students to be ambitious with their designs as we know that they will learn so much by pushing the boundary and trying new skills and using new machines.

At Key Stage 3 we have three strands of summative assessment, and two strands of formative assessment. Our summative assessments consists of the project work, the students design work in their sketchbook, and a “Quest” which is not quite a quiz, not quite a test, but a multiple choice “quest” which assesses their knowledge of all of the theory they covered whilst completing the project.

Our formative assessment consists of constant feedback in class from our teachers which we believe is the real key to success as often students will come up with great ideas in class and need help and guidance at that moment from our teachers to guide them in the right direction. Our second strand of formative assessment consists of a range of designing and making targets that students will stick into the first page of their sketchbook. As a student progresses through a project it will become clear what areas they are strong in and what areas they need to work on. These targets help to focus the students by giving clear guidance on where they should focus their attention.