I've been struggling of late to get to grips with assessment for our new S1 science course.

I'd never been much of a fan of our old approach - 3 x 12 mark multi-choice test & 1 big KU & PS test on a whole term of work, every term in S1 & S2, up until subject choices for S3. I was pretty sure this shouldn't be continued into our new CfE-based courses, but nobody was coming up with much in the way of a viable alternative either.

I wasn't really too convinced by an approach that had been suggested for assessing pupils' experiment write-ups in terms of 'knowledge & understanding', 'problem solving', 'literacy' and 'numeracy'. My reticence was probably down to a nagging doubt that we were replacing one system of assessment for the sake of it with another.

So, off I went to my BtC5 (just the short 'reporting' one, mind) and had a think about what I felt we should be trying to do.

A little while later, after wrestling with the LTS 'My Experiences & Outcomes' site I grouped some E&Os, that I thought fitted the task (none specifically science), and could be used to assess the pupils' work against.

The next job was to come up with a way of recording the assessment for this task, and explaining the whole thing to my colleagues. After a bit more consideration, I came up with these -

S1 Assessment - Reporting on Progress

S1 Investigations - Assessment Record Sheet

These documents have been well received by the science PTs and a DHT who I asked to have a look, but I'd also appreciate some feedback from others outwith my own school.

So, over to you, my valued and trusted PLN. Please give me your honest opinions, both positive and negative, and any suggestions for improvements you might have - if you have the time.

Please also feel free to use anything from these documents as a basis for something you might do yourself, just let me know what you might be doing, so that I might be able to share your ideas further.