Assessments are done in every subject that the children learn about. PE is another that assessment is crucial for the learning of all skills. Here we discuss what to think about when assessing and when you should be assessing the children.

Here are 6 top tips when assessing the children –

  • Keep it simple – Many skills are passed over to other skills, so there is no need to reassess here, you are just making sure they can apply a skill that they have already accomplished.

  • Make it visual – This way it is quick and easy to assess the pupils, by visually seeing what they are achieving.

  • Focus – Look at how the children have progressed rather then what they have obtained. This way throughout your assessment you will be able to see the progression through the year.

  • Over assessing – Don’t over assess the children, for starters you will be repeating yourself. Try and do a in depth assessment once a term and mini ones throughout the term.

  • Progress – Make sure you can celebrate the progress of the children. For example if you have just finished Dance allow the children to perform in an assembly or an afterschool performance for the parents. This way the children can feel proud about what they have achieved.

There are many different ways of assessing the children’s progress below we look at how we can do this –

  • Self assessment – Allow the children to work on their own, pairs or groups to assess how they feel they are doing with learning the genre they are learning. After the discussion allow them to share this with the rest of the class.

  • Question and answer – Allow the children to work in three teams, the teacher will be the quiz master and ask questions the children have to discuss and write down. Add up the scores and see who wins. This is a great way of making sure the children aren’t just going through the motions of the PE lessons and that they can actually remember and write the answers down.

  • Journal if knowledge – The children will have a note book for PE, at the start of a new PE subject they write everything down they feel the know about the subject, in the middle they write anything new they have learnt and what they can do and at the end of the term they write anything else they have learnt, how they could improve and what they can now do.

  • Tick chart – It is always hard to find the time to assess the children throughout PE, you are needing to watch them to make sure they are on task and safe. At the beginning of every new subject take a register with you and write the learning objective at the top, then above the list of names write accomplished, almost accomplished and not accomplished, during or after the session tick next to each child’s name what they have achieved. This way it is easier to do an end of term assessment.

There are many other ways to assess the children, this are just quick and simple ways of assessing them with the time that you have on your hands.