Feeding forward: A case study of dialogic assessment

Elizabeth Hennah and Glenn Y Bezalel, St Helen’s School, UK At St Helen’s, we have trialled the use of a ‘reading journal’ in English literature for Year 7 students. This is a method to implement dialogic assessment, through which teachers guide their students to exercise curiosity and create cross-curricular links between reading in English and all other disciplines. This development is, essentially, dialogic as it grows a shared space predicated on respect, mutual concern and communality, which sees the teacher and students engage collaboratively, in a manner that goes beyond any individual student’s own reasoning. Within this method, assessment is bound up with learning, thereby improving students’ educational experience and raising attainment in oracy as well as the written word.  Dialogic assessment Robin Alexander, a pioneer of dialogic teaching, noted that ‘talk is a powerful tool for assessment because of the way talk is embedded in teaching rather than separa