Assessment Project Reflections

‘Quality Assessment Tasks, the English Syllabus and Interplanetary Travel’

  • I hadn’t used the Planning for alignment model from Issue No.6 Growing an Assessment Culture(EQ Nov 2005) until Jan Reynolds and Trudy Large encouraged its use at the Assessment Immersion days. It’s changed the way I plan. BEFORE- the teachers of my grade level would go into an integrated planning meeting weighed down with boxes of teacher resources and all sorts of stale ideas. Although our teacher librarian would try to keep us on track, the unitplan would not be completed by the end of our time and what was planned was too much and unwieldy. AFTER- I would only take the syllabus documents, planning format and the placemat to a planning meeting consisting ideally of a curriculum leader and classroom teachers and if possible teachers to provide a learning support, special needs and gifted and talented perspective.
  • The ‘My Assessment Rules’ project asked for an assessment task with an English Syllabus focus. Because I was working with a new syllabus, the job seemed a bit daunting but Wendy Tunin and Kay Bishop advised to “have a play” and to “keep it small”, this gave me the confidence to have a go. I still don’t know if I’ve got it right. I ended up using Cultural, Operational and Critical criteria, but I also played with a version using the Text Types, Subject Matter, Roles and Relationships, Mode and Medium headings and they seem to work just as well.
  • At a QSA English Syllabus for trial schools day, Judy Murphy’s advice was to “tinker towards utopia”. She kindly provided some feedback on the assessment criteria, her suggested headings were: Making meaning in contexts, Using language systems and Evaluating and Reconstructing meanings in texts. Those heading seem to work fine and her reasoning was sound, “to try and get the Cu/Op and Cr working together with TT/SM/RR/MM”.
  • Writing a model travel brochure was a worthwhile exercise. It especially made me realise the importance of linking information coherently throughout this text type using pronouns, synonyms and repetition of text and appropriate graphics. I realised that the task was a challenging one, asking students to present scientific knowledge critically and creatively and that the paragraphs needed to be carefully scaffolded so that the low literacy learners could also achieve success. The students began to learn about the language and design features they were expected to use in their own brochure by studying the model text; they annotated my text and their own and I realised that this skill could become a useful reading and writing assessment tool.
  • In my capacity as Literacy Project Officer for the region I have supervised six ‘My Assessment Rules’ project schools. I recently visited the groupsfor their ‘compulsory out of school meeting’ and have been impressed by the professionalism of all teachers involved. They were enthusiastic about their units of work, the growth of their own knowledge and the improvement of student outcomes.Here are some thoughts from the group:

-It kept us on track; we taught what was important to get to the end goal.

-I was clear about what I needed to do. I taught the steps explicitly. I modelled and we jointly constructed. This helped all students achieve success.

-A better knowledge of grammar helped us all to have a language to talk about the language, we now all easily use terms like alliteration, adjectives andmodality.

-We started the term with the assessment criteria and task sheet. Our students liked knowing what they were in for.

-It made assessment more a part of the unit, not something to do to the kids just at the end.

-This is how I learn best, give me a bit of theory, the time to try it out, provide some support when I need it, opportunities to discuss and reflect and make me prove that I’ve learnt something at the end.

-We also had a school camp and athletics this term but we actually still completed our unit of work. Thingswere more manageable. We taught only what we needed to teach.