Hot or Cold Assessments?

Assessments can be a daunting task when your pupils communicate in different ways and are accessing various levels of education. So lets dive into the difference between hot and cold assessments and how we can apply them in our classrooms.

Assessing progress for pupils with complex needs is difficult for more reasons than one!

The first hurdle is establishing a starting point. If we introduce a new topic to a pupil, it can be difficult to establish what they already know, and therefore where to start teaching.

Then we need to ensure that they understand what we are asking of them. Its all well and good to ask a question, but if its in the wrong language they probably won't be able to answer.

Finally, the method of assessment needs to be accessible. If the pupil has limited fine motor skills, asking them to write the answer isn't going to work.

Cold Assessments
A cold assessment is a short independent task provided to pupils to test their knowledge of an un-taught topic or skill. This helps us identify gaps and create the appropriate scaffolds for future lessons.

Hot Assessments
A hot assessment uses the tasks from the teaching to assess if the pupil has retained the information or skill. They can be used to show progress and determine if a pupil is ready to move onto the next topic.

Support during the Assessments

Whilst a traditional assessment is completed without support, whether the pupil succeeds or not, this can create further stress and anxiety for our pupils. So instead we measure using levels of support; this could include prompts, hand under hand or completing parts of the task for them.

Full support - Needs guidance throughout the whole task,
Partial support - May need prompting or reminders.
Full independence - Completes the task without any prompting.

We are not talking about support like communication devices, movement breaks or fidget tools that pupils need to access the lesson. These should ALWAYS be provided as needed.

What does this look like in our classrooms?

Let's start with creating a baseline using cold assessments... Think of a task that could be done without extensive prompting or support (for your specific pupil), for example ordering towers of blocks from smallest to biggest. Provide an instruction using their preferred method of communication such as verbal and visuals. For this example the visuals might be 'big' and 'small' placed either side of a tray with an arrow from one to the other. We then want to see what level of support they need to complete the task.

If they start building a bridge, or they take all the blocks off the tray... we are taking that as they don't understand. This could be that they don't understand the instruction, they don't know how to complete the task, or they aren't interested in completing the task. They could also start but not get it all correct.

Any of these responses are okay! Take note of what happened, how they responded and what they did or didn't get right.

What if they complete the task correctly?

If they complete your first task correctly, you will need to continue providing increasingly difficult (or different) tasks until you find their level. This could mean they are confident in their numbers but don't know their shapes. Or it could be finding the ceiling in a particular topic, for example they can count to 10 but not to 20. Remember, you don't need all of these assessments to happen in one session.

What happens next?

Now we can take the information and start teaching. We can use a variety of materials and activities including the task we used as the assessment. We want to introduce the concept in a variety of contexts and with different tasks to ensure they understand it transfers, for example big and small should be taught using images, small objects and larger items like furniture or trees!

And the hot assessment?

At the end of your teaching unit (or during it) you will want to test if pupils are retaining the information you have taught them. To do this we want to use a task that has been used during the teaching. We could even bring back the cold assessment, though they may have progressed past the initial test point.

We can compare their ability to complete the task and the amount of support that needed to the original cold assessment to look at the progress made.

What if they still need full support?

Not every pupil is going to make clear progress but even the small things count. Maybe they removed the blocks from the table in the cold assessment but this time they took the blocks from you and placed them on the table. Or they went from watching you order the blocks to ordering the blocks themselves, even if not correctly.

The key is being able to track what has changed. From here we can adapt our teaching, repeat topics, or progress onto further topics and skills.

We hope that you've found this blog helpful. We hope to continue providing information in this format, so if there is a topic you want us to talk about make sure to let us know!

Email us: info@discoverinclusion.co.uk
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