Curriculum News

compiled by Shannon Reeve

Assessment - Oh No, not another test!

When you say the word 'assessment', often the first thing that comes to mind is a silent exam room with people furiously scribbling down answers to questions. And yes, this does happen and we do test our students. But why do we test, and is it the only thing we use to assess our students?

At BPPS assessment is an integral part of the teaching and learning program. The assessments we conduct are used to understand our children’s thinking, development and learning.

Our teachers use assessment data to:

-understand what the students in their class or grade level know and can do and how they are developing

-identify point of need for teaching and plan lessons accordingly

-select specific resources eg. books for reading groups to help your child understand a particular skill, concept or understand information

-report to parents/carers, in writing and in discussions

Our students are encouraged to be participants in the assessment and reporting process. This means that students have the opportunity to:

-monitor and evaluate their own progress through self-assessment. They are encouraged and supported to revise their work, to develop a better understanding of what they have learned, and what they need to work on

-assess the work of their peers against agreed criteria. They are encouraged and supported to work collaboratively to assess if they have met the success criteria, giving both feedback on what was done well and areas for development

-set goals for their own learning in maths, reading and writing, and personal goals

-provide reflections about their learning in student-led conferences and expos.

What is assessment and why do we do it?

At home, you assess things your child does every day. You check to see if your child is feeling well and can come to school. You observe them at the park interacting with their friends. You are gathering information and using this to make a decision about how to go forward. Teachers use assessment the same way in your child’s education.

Assessment refers to all the ways we gather information about progress in a student’s learning. It is carried out to see what our students understand and are able to do. Knowing where our students are at allows us to plan accurately for the next stage of learning, and allows our students to track and take ownership of their learning.

What assessment do we do at BPPS?

Your child's progress is not only based on tests but on the learning that takes place within the classroom. Evidence of their progress and achievements will come from day to day learning and through the things they may write, say, make or do. For example, evidence may emerge as a result of our students taking part in a presentation, discussion, performance or practical investigation. Evidence could also be a drawing, report, samples of student’s work at several stages of completion, photographs or videos showing work in progress, or piece of art work that they have produced.

Our assessment covers two areas:

Reporting to parents/carers, in writing and in discussions, to help you understand your child's progress and suggest what you can do to help your child's learning – this is called summative assessment.
Strategies teachers use to support and assess our students learning, monitor progress and identify next steps in the learning journey – this is called formative assessment.

Summative assessment is the ‘sum’ of learning. It is designed to find out how much our students knows at the end of the unit, semester or year and identify where they are working against the Victorian Curriculum. This also tells our teachers what gaps there may be in the subject knowledge and where their students may need extra support. The Progressive Achievement Tests (PAT) in reading and maths undertaken in November are an example of summative assessment, where our student’s total knowledge of the curriculum is tested in these areas and helps us measure what our students understand and are capable of.

Along with the PAT tests we also use:

-Post tests Eg. Essential Assessment

-Rich Assessment Tasks Eg. Share at Expos

-End of unit written or oral tasks

-Work samples

-Anecdotal notes

Formative assessment. Formative assessment is ongoing assessment and our teachers use it every day in the classroom to track their students progress, strengths and identify needs. It may be in the form of success criteria, marking, discussions with children, targeted probing questioning, observations and quizzes/challenges that test a child's deeper understanding of a subject. All of this allows them to find out how their students are progressing and they then use this information to decide the next step in the learning process. It helps them to judge if the children understand the lesson or the concept and identify any misconceptions that they may need support with and adjust their teaching to support them further if necessary.

You may have heard your child speak of ‘learning intentions’ and ‘success criteria’. Each curriculum area is broken down into a set of experiences (learning intentions) and outcomes (success criteria). The learning intention describes the learning while the success criteria represents what the learning will achieve. This is often explained, from the student’s perspective as an “I can…” statement. Our teachers use learning intentions and success criteria for each lesson, giving the children a chance to self-assess against these, either at the end of the lesson or during the lesson. The teacher also uses the success criteria to assess the work, identifying learning and what the next steps are.

At the start of the year, term or topic each Team will set assessment tasks in the different curriculum areas, whether it be a test or written piece of work, to ‘see where students are at’. These are then reviewed by the Teams to identify what the students know and don’t know, as there is little point teaching what students already know. This data is then used as a starting point for teaching, to group students (using a fluid model) within classes or across teams, and plan for differentiated lessons that target students at their point of need. It is also used to help develop individualised learning plans for some students. These pre-assessments also give the students a preview of what they will be learning. Post-assessment data is collected and reviewed by teachers on what students recalled, and compared to the pre-assessment data to determine growth and identify areas that may need to be revisited.

In conclusion, the fundamental purpose of assessment is to not only provide evidence to teachers, students and parents of student progress and achievement, but to provide evidence of learning to inform teachers about curriculum and instructional decisions.

ANSWERS TO MATHS OLYMPIAD SAMPLE TEST from previous newsletter: