Learning & Teaching

Dear LPS Community,

Assessment of Learning

As we move past the halfway mark of the term, our teachers are now looking to complete assessments of student learning to inform their Semester 1 progress reports to parents. 

Lysterfield places a strong emphasis on implementing a wide variety of assessments to get a clear and robust picture of student learning. 

The most valuable assessment we undertake at Lysterfield is what we term short-cycle or formative assessment. This is assessment that occurs daily, multiple times in the lesson, in the form of ‘checks for understanding’. The teacher asks students to regularly show their knowledge and understanding, and uses to this student data to inform next steps of teaching in the lesson. Short-cycle assessment allows our teachers to be responsive and adaptive to student needs, ensuring they can provide support and extension for students in every lesson as required. 

After a term and a half of teaching, and countless ‘checks for understanding’ in all areas of the curriculum (4-20 times a lesson), our teachers have a very clear understanding of student learning which informs their teacher judgement against the curriculum that is reported to parents at the end of this term. 

Over the next few weeks, students will also engage in summative assessments, which are more formal assessments that assess student learning against the curriculum. At LPS, some of these assessments include Progress Achievement Tests and assessments from the Department of Education’s Digital Assessment Library. These assessments are holistic and directly relate to the broad curriculum in each subject area.

Where formative assessments support teachers to understand how students are progressing day by day, lesson by lesson, summative assessments give teachers a picture of how students are progressing against broad achievement standards in particular subject areas of the curriculum. Summative assessments assess what students have truly learned – what they can remember and apply. 

When you receive your child’s report at the end of the semester, you will know that their progress against the curriculum has been meticulously mapped based on what they have shown their teacher in numerous formative assessments, as well as what they have demonstrated on more broad summative assessments. 

We look forward to sharing the progress all your children have made after a busy and learning filled semester at Lysterfield. 

Reports will be available for parents on July 2nd.

Have a wonderful weekend, 

Zahra Harvey |  Learning Specialist