Standard 5.1: Assess Student Learning.
Demonstrate understanding of assessment strategies, including informal and formal, diagnostic, formative and summative approaches to assess student learning.
Teachers must provide adequate feedback to students in order to help them improve and succeed in their academic career. This is done by giving students a range of assessment strategies which include: informal, formal, diagnostic, formative, and summative types of assessment. |
ICT Elaboration: Demonstrate understanding of the educative value of providing students with multiple and varied diagnostic, formative and summative assessments and the application of digital resources and tools in facilitating a range of approaches to assessment.
ICT can be used in a range of ways to facilitate this process. I believe that students should be engaged in a variety of formative assessment pieces to prepare them for their summative work. Poll Everywhere, Quizlet or Socrative are fantastic for giving students pop quizzes that help identify specific areas for students to work on. Teachers should also upload student results (formative or summative) to a learning platform so that students and parents can easily monitor progress. |
Evidence.
During my teaching practicums I was able to set a wide range of formative and summative assessment pieces. I tried to set challenging but straight forward formative pieces, and provide students with extensive feedback so that they could reevaluate, prepare and improve for their summative assessment tasks. Below is an example of a formative assessment task that I did with my year 10 French class. This worked as a great diagnostic tool because I was able to identify the common errors and go over those as a group. I was also able to see reoccurring errors made by individuals; I was able to address those privately in my written feedback. |
formative_assessmen_-_choisissez_un_cadeau.pdf | |
File Size: | 32 kb |
File Type: |
nous_avons_choisi_un_cadeau__formative_task_feedback_-_names_blacked_out.pdf | |
File Size: | 61 kb |
File Type: |
Standard 5.2: Provide feedback to students on their learning.
Demonstrate an understanding of the purpose of providing timely and appropriate feedback to students about their learning.
It is essential that teachers provide students with feedback on their learning. The best way for students to improve is through detailed and well explained feedback. Feedback needs to be delivered to students in a timely manner, giving them the opportunity to address areas that need improvement. |
ICT Elaboration: Demonstrate an understanding of the purpose of providing timely and appropriate feedback to students about their learning.
Edmodo has the option of adding an online grade book where student marks can be published and then accessed by students. The benefit of an online grade book is that students are able to view these grades as soon as the teacher has made them available online, as opposed to, waiting until the next class with that teacher. Teachers can also include comments, letting students know what they did well and how they can improve. |
Evidence.
I believe feedback is one of the most important tools for student improvement and self assessment. It also encourages independent learning. When I hand back assignments I generally do two things: give students time in class to read my comments and go over any common mistakes or errors. The aim is that students will actively take a mental note of suggested areas for improvement and then work on them in the future. I know that when I received feedback as a student I never actually read my teachers comments. Hopefully, giving them some class time they will actually read the comments. Below I have attached copies of my student feedback for a year 10 French summative assessment task. |
|
|
|
|
Standard 5.3: Make consistent and comparable judgements.
Demonstrate understanding of assessment moderation and its application to support consistent and comparable judgements of student learning.
Standard 5.3 requires teachers to make consistent and comparable judgements and to understand how assessment moderation supports student learning. This is important because student work needs to be assessed against consistent benchmarks (with the exception of students who have alternative assessment requirements, which have been tailored to that student) so that all students are graded fairly and so that they can understand what is required of them to improve their work. The best way to achieve this is by providing students with a detailed rubric which outlines what needs to be done to receive a particular grade. |
ICT Elaboration: Demonstrate knowledge and understanding of the ways that digital resources and tools can be used to enhance the validity, reliability and efficiency of approaches to assessment and evaluation.
ICT can be used to facilitate this process. Rubistar can be used to easily create rubrics. After creating a rubric it should be uploaded to a learning platform like Edmodo so that students have access to it 24/7. |
Evidence.
I create rubrics for all of my summative assessment pieces, and sometimes I also create them for my formative tasks. I find that without a rubric I struggle to compare students work and grade them accordingly. When I was at the Waldorf Steiner School in Mount Barker I used a slightly different method to compare students' work and make consisted judgements. I provided them with a marking scheme showing how I would allocate grades and what I would be looking for in their work. The reason I created a generic marking scheme in Main Lesson is because it is almost impossible to create a rubric for every individual piece of work, if you consider we generally get through 2-3 tasks in one Main Lesson and they do one more for homework. It's more beneficial for students to have a generic marking scheme. Below is an example of a of rubric I created during my first practicum and the marking scheme I used for my year 8s at Waldorf Steiner School. |
|
|
Standard 5.4: Interpret student data.
Demonstrate the capacity to interpret student assessment data to evaluate student learning and modify teaching practice.
Teachers need to be able to demonstrate that they can effectively evaluate student learning and student assessment data so that they can improve and modify their teaching practices in the future. This is essential so that teachers continue to provide students with the very best quality education. |
ICT Elaboration: Demonstrate the capacity to use digital tools for recording, managing and analysing student assessment data to inform future practice.
This can be done using Excel. Teachers can input students’ grades and use this format to track trends in student grades, compare results over time, and assess how students perform in different types of assessment tasks. |
Evidence.
I used an Excel spreadsheet to keep record of students grades. I found that this was the easiest way of tracking student progress. Visually, a spreadsheet is helpful because it is easy to see how students achieved as a group. For example, if I can see that most of the students in the class achieved less than a 5/10 for a particular piece of work I can assume that perhaps they didn't understand the task or maybe I made the task too challenging, With this information I can modify my teaching practice accordingly. |
industrial_revolution_grades.docx | |
File Size: | 23 kb |
File Type: | docx |
*In this file you can see that there are some grades missing, this is for a variety of reasons which I was aware of at the time. Some students' names are highlighted, this is because I needed to pay additional attention to their progress. In some cases it looks like some students weren't producing the required work, however, due to the unique nature and structure of the Main Lesson some of these students would hand up these missing items of work as part of their Main Lesson book (at the end of the unit). Missing grades on the spreadsheet are more of an indication that students had bad time management or organisational skills rather than and inability to complete the required work.*
Standard 5.5: report on student achievement.
Demonstrate understanding of a range of strategies for reporting to students and parents/carers and the purpose of keeping accurate and reliable records of student achievement.
There are obviously many ways in which teachers can inform parents/carers about student achievement. In the past hardcopy report cards were sent home, however, these days digital copies can be emailed to parents. Thanks to the advances in technology teachers can provide more frequent and detailed feedback to parents (and students) through a learning platform like Edmodo. Teachers can up load student results and provide comments for all assessment tasks which can be accessed by parents and students at their convenience. |
ICT Elaboration: Demonstrates knowledge and understanding of current and potential use of digital resources and tools to support reporting to students and parents/carers and for achievement record keeping.
High quality reporting to parents and caregivers is essential to support student learning. It also encourages communication and teamwork between the home and school which creates the ideal learning environment. |
Evidence.
Although I am yet to write formal reports one of my mentor teachers showed me how reports are written at her school. See explained that the school doesn't like for teachers to make statements like 'I am very happy with Sam's effort and achievement this term'. They prefer for the teacher to say something like 'Sam has made considerable effort this term and his/her achievement reflects this'. My teacher showed me the program they use to collate grades and teacher comments for report cards. I know that this was just an introduction to report writing but I feel more confident about the reporting process after being shown these things. It is important that teachers keep correct records so that reports accurately convey student results. Below is an example of two student reports as sown to me by my mentor teacher. |
students_reports.pdf | |
File Size: | 29 kb |
File Type: |