Assessment for Learning (AfL) refers to activities undertaken by teachers and students to provide feedback to modify teaching and learning activities. Strategies for AfL include feedback, formative marking, comment-only marking, peer assessment, self-assessment, and questioning. Research shows that comment-only marking, where students receive only comments without marks, is most effective for improving student work as the comments help students learn to judge their own work and improve. Peer assessment can also be effective as feedback from peers is less emotionally charged than from teachers. Blogs can be used to support AfL strategies.

1. Assessment for Learning What is AfL and what strategies can be used? Susan Kambalu, St Thomas More Catholic School, 7 May 2008

5. Comment-only marking Butler (1988), quoted in Black et al. (2003, p. 43) researched the effectiveness of marking – out of the three options of giving marks only , comments only , or both a mark and a comment , students’ work improved in the case of those given comment-only marking . One of the reasons why this type of marking is most effective, as put forward by Black et al. (2003, p. 50) is that these comments help provide “the training that students needed to judge their own learning and to begin to take action to improve”.