Continuous student reporting – the next step? In the first article in this series related to ACER’s Communicating Student Learning Progress project, we reviewed some of the recent history of student reporting practices in Australia, including the discontent expressed by various stakeholders about the measures used in reporting, the level of detail provided, the accessibility of language used, and the intelligibility of information that reports have presented. Here we examine more recent trends and current reporting practices in schools, specifically the growing use of electronic systems and tools.
We also consider the opportunities and possibilities that these systems offer for reporting in the future, particularly in light of recommendations presented in the recent Gonski report Through Growth to Achievement: Report of the Review to Achieve Educational Excellence in Australian Schools related to reporting both learning attainment and gain (Australian Government Department of Education and Training, 2018). Continuous reporting. Teaching and assessing general capabilities. Over the last five or so years the focus around general capabilities substantially shifted from the question of why we should be assessing and teaching the skills.
The main question now is how we can teach and assess general capabilities including critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, and research skills. Many schools or systems are adopting an agenda for integrating, teaching and assessing general capabilities but are getting into difficulty when it comes to identifying resources to do so. With different perspectives and little concrete evidence, educators are understandably uncertain about which perspective to adopt, or are finding it difficult to identify resources to implement. Unfortunately, we are in a ‘chicken and egg’ holding pattern. By nature, 21st century learning activities are often open-ended, involve unbounded sets of information, and there may be ongoing redefinition of the goal of the task. How much focus does your school give the general capabilities? A different way to organise the school curriculum. There are good reasons to rethink how we organise the school curriculum.
An alternative would be to structure the curriculum as a sequence of proficiency levels unrelated to age or year level. Currently, the school curriculum is packaged into year levels. For example, a Year 5 teacher is expected to teach the Year 5 curriculum to all Year 5 students who are then assessed and graded against Year 5 curriculum expectations. The problem with this approach is that, in each year of school, students are at very different points in their learning. This means that less advanced students often are presented with year-level material that is much too difficult. At the same time, more advanced students often are presented with year-level material that is much too easy.
The attempt to specify what an individual should learn on the basis of their age or year level flies in the face of what we know about learning itself. Advantages Lifting achievement levels. MYP OCC ATL planning chart.docx. 6 Reasons to Try a Single-Point Rubric. As educators, we know the power of a good rubric. Well-crafted rubrics facilitate clear and meaningful communication with our students and help keep us accountable and consistent in our grading. They’re important and meaningful classroom tools. Usually when we talk about rubrics, we’re referring to either a holistic or an analytic rubric, even if we aren’t entirely familiar with those terms. A holistic rubric breaks an assignment down into general levels at which a student can perform, assigning an overall grade for each level.
For example, a holistic rubric might describe an A essay using the following criteria: “The essay has a clear, creative thesis statement and a consistent overall argument. Both styles have their advantages and have served many classrooms well. The single-point rubric offers a different approach to systematic grading in the classroom. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Meet the #SinglePointRubric. 5 Classroom Tools to Measure Student Learning.
Formative assessment is important in every classroom. End of unit assessment should never be a surprise to students or their teacher. And with the availability of so many great educational technology tools, measuring student learning is easy to do. Check out five of my favorite ways to measure student learning in my classroom. Kahoot! Before my building implemented a 1:1 program, we allowed our students to bring their own devices for classroom use. Quizizz Much like Kahoot, Quizizz allows teachers to gather evidence of student learning in a fun, gamified environment.
Quizlet Live Many students know Quizlet as a flash card creation tool, but it’s so much more than that. Padlet If you’re looking for a collaborative space for your students to communicate about anything, look no further than Padlet, a free tool for teachers and students to share information, resources, images, and more (there’s also a premium version).
Flipgrid. The Downside of Checking Kids’ Grades Constantly - The New York Times. But can we measure it? - Teacher. It’s often asserted that some things can’t be measured. But how true is this? And if we can’t measure something, should we stop pretending we can teach or develop it? Can creativity be measured? What about resilience? We take for granted the measurement of variables such as length, weight and temperature, but it is worth remembering that these variables and their measurement were human inventions. In practice, every variable begins with an intention to think of something as varying in amount from lower levels to higher levels, from less to more, shorter to longer, lighter to heavier, colder to hotter – along a single dimension. We recognise that some variables are closely related. In education, the concept of a variable is a fundamental and ubiquitous idea.
We recognise that educational variables, too, are often related. So educational variables are not fundamentally different from other variables. Instruments The construction of instruments is a non-trivial undertaking. Home - Arts Assessment For Learning. Combining samples of student work with rubrics - Teacher. With 20 blank faces staring back at me, it was clear that no formative assessment was required. We had definitely not met the success criteria for this session: ‘To understand the features of an effective poetry recital and the criteria set out in the poetry recital rubric.’ After painstakingly working through the criterion on the rubric, discussing what each might look like and clarifying unfamiliar words, my students were no clearer about the expectations of the poetry recital assessment.
I, like many other teachers, thought that rubrics clearly articulated the expectations of assessments and would naturally promote achievement. However, there is little empirical evidence to support this intuitive belief (Andrade, Du, & Wang, 2008) and the bewildered faces staring back at me certainly did not add any anecdotal weight to the argument either. When the time came to begin preparing to teach poetry again, the blanks faces still haunted me. How to use student samples of work References. Assessment online: informing teaching and learning | Online publication for school educators | ACER. [Image ©Shutterstock/ Vintage Tone] Online assessments are capable of providing significantly improved feedback to teaching and learning. Experience in schools is demonstrating the potential of online assessment – provided the foundations are right. The advantages of online assessment are often described in terms of its administrative convenience, efficiency and lower costs.
However, well-constructed online assessments also are capable of providing more timely, more instructionally useful feedback to teaching and learning. Informing classroom practice Online assessments are most useful to teaching and learning when they are designed to reveal where students are in their learning. The Progressive Achievement Tests (PAT online) illustrate how this works. An obvious benefit of online assessment with automatic scoring is that it frees teachers to focus their energies on understanding and using assessment results to maximise the effectiveness of their teaching. Marking online assessments. How I Eliminated (Almost) All Grading Problems In My Classroom - How I Eliminated (Almost) All Grading Problems In My Classroom by Terry Heick Grading is one of the most urgent bugaboos of good teaching. It can take an extraordinary amount of time. It can also demoralize students, get them in trouble at home, or keep them from getting into a certain college.
It can demoralize teachers, too. So over the years as a teacher, I cobbled together a kind of system that was, most crucially, student-centered. Some of this approach was covered in Why Did That Student Fail? Which meant students weren’t paralyzed with fear when I asked them to complete increasingly complex tasks they were worried were beyond their reach. 1. When I first started teaching, I thought in terms of ‘assignments’ and ‘tests.’ But eentually I started thinking instead in terms of ‘practice’ and ‘measurement.’ The big idea is what I often call a ‘climate of assessment,’ where snapshots of student understanding and progress are taken in organic, seamless, and non-threatening ways. 2. 3. 4. Tech-Based Formative Assessment. How do you check for understanding in your classroom? When we use formative assessment strategies, we’re on a fact-finding mission.
As educators, we work to figure out who understands the teaching point of a lesson, who has mastered a new concept, who needs extra help. Formative assessment happens naturally as we walk around the room and listen in on student conversations or examine their classwork after the bell rings. But how can you use technological tools to check for understanding in meaningful, sustainable, and scalable ways? As a one-to-one classroom teacher, I was able to leverage the power of a device in the hands of every student. I’ve put together tips for making the most of the technology you and your students have access to. Whether you have a class set of Chromebooks shared by your grade level team or a handful of iPads given to your class at the beginning of the year, the possibilities are endless.
Embed Questions Into Your Instruction Introduce Screencasts to Students. Promoting long-term learning progress | Online publication for school educators | ACER. [Image ©Shutterstock/Ollyy] How well do we help students recognise and reflect on the long-term progress they make at school? Consider how students commonly experience learning progress in music – for example, through their engagement with the Suzuki method or the curriculum of the Australian Music Examinations Board (AMEB). The AMEB has constructed a series of ‘grades’ through which students are able to progress. These grades extend from beginner level through Grades 1 to 8 to tertiary entrance standard. The AMEB grades are not tied to particular ages or year levels; Grade 4 piano can be achieved by a five-year old or a 75-year old.
AMEB grades describe and illustrate progress in different aspects of music – Music Theory, Music Craft and Musicianship. Music teachers work with individuals who can be at very different points in their music learning and assist them to work towards the next level of proficiency. ACER is pursuing a similar approach through our ACER Certificates program. Can A Test Measure This? - Can A Test Measure This? Personality Qualities Not Measured By Tests by Terry Heick Woe to the standardized test, bastard child of ed reform and a dated and industrialized approach learning. Damning evidence of the failure of our collective imagination to design ways to help children come to understand what’s worth understanding. Who knew a vertical sliver of paper, stamped with little bubbles and otherwise boringly plain and harmless, could become (let’s continue to mix our metaphors) the flash point of school improvement debates worldwide?
One way to consider improving here might be to wonder what might happen if we’d look at these tests as the measure of success for schools and not teachers and students? So, absent of a better idea, we give the tests to students. The message within the image is, of course, true. Today’s tests, as they’re designed, administered, and reported today–trains us to scrutinize those responsible for the test-takers performance. Or–oooh, here’s an idea! 34 Strategies For The Stages Of Assessment: Before, During & After -
34 Strategies For The Stages Of Assessment: Before, During & After by TeachThought Staff For professional development on assessment, contact us today. The follow graphic from the infographic-famous Mia MacMeekin offers 34 strategies for each stage of the assessment process–before, during, and after. Rather than simply repeat them from the graphic, we’ve give a quick primer on the differences between each stage in terms of its purpose/function in the learning process. Take to the comments with any strategies you find useful in your classroom, and give Mia a follow on twitter and say hello! Before/Pre-Assessment Our take: The purpose of pre-assessment is to provide data to revise planned instruction.
During Our take: The purpose of assessment during instruction is to begin to measure progress from the pre-assessment, as well as clarifying individual gaps in understanding to further refine instruction. After/Post-Assessment 34 Strategies For The Stages Of Assessment. The Research Files Episode 23: Bias in grading. Listen to and download all the Teacher podcasts for free on iTunes and SoundCloud Thank you for downloading this episode of The Research Files podcast series, brought to you by Teacher magazine – I’m Rebecca Vukovic. Are teachers ever influenced by bias when it comes to grading student work? This is the focus of a new report [published in the Australian Journal of Education] from researchers at the University of New England, which looks at different types of potential bias in grading including gender, race and physical attractiveness.
Associate Professor John Malouff joins me in this episode to discuss the findings from his research and what schools can do to minimise bias in the classroom. Rebecca Vukovic: Professor John Malouff, thanks for joining Teacher magazine. John Malouff: Hi, I’m glad to be with you. RV: OK to start off, could you talk me through the key findings from your research into bias in grading? JM: Well we just did a search, like bloodhounds, for every potential study. Informing practice with strong evidence. Imagine you’re the head of a high school Maths department. Every year, you face a challenge: a group of students will enter from primary school struggling with basic maths skills.
You know that these students won’t just struggle in Maths but will find it difficult to access the curriculum in other subject areas, too. If you can help them close the achievement gap with their peers, they’ll be much more likely to have success throughout high school and life. Of course, there are a number of programs or approaches you could choose to meet this challenge. You might know about them from colleagues in your professional network, from the system or association you’re part of, or from your online community. How do you know which one to choose?
The value of evidence School leaders face challenges like this regularly. We hope the toolkit offers a good introduction for educators who want to inform their decisions with strong evidence. Addressing the gap Schools involvement in building new evidence. Feedback on feedback. From concept to classroom – STEM research. Monitoring student growth. Is there another way to think about schooling?
Assessment in context-based teaching and learning. Want to help students improve their work? Mark them on their progress | Higher Education Network. If Grades don't Advance Learning, Why Do We Give Them? | CTQ #CTQCollab. Does A to E grading show individual growth and progress? Removing grades from student reports. Raising the bar. Edutopia. Reflecting on and refining assessment tasks. Teachthought.
The Perfect Assessment - The Mistakes That Quality Assessments Avoid. 10 Principles of Proficiency-Based Learning. 10 Principles of Proficiency-Based Learning. What Great Teachers Know About Their Students. School Improvement Episode 6: Targeted teaching with Peter Goss | Teacher | ACER. The Assessment Range: Using Data In The Classroom. Quantified Learners: Moving Beyond Assessment. The Inconvenient Truth About Assessment. [rd] Measuring learning growth in a world of universal education | Research Developments | ACER.
The New SPA Platform.
How To Use Formative Assessment With (And Without) Technology. How Competency-Based Learning Actually Works. ClassBadges | Home. ClassBadges Now Offering Free Custom Gamification Badges. Turnitin : Leading Plagiarism Checker, Online Grading and Peer Review. RubiStar Home.
What is Authentic Assessment? All In Learning » Tutorials.