Assessment & Reporting Tools
What is the prime purpose of Assessment and Reporting?
- To provide feedback to our students and their parents on learning progress and performance?
- To obtain data to for us as teachers to reflect on how effective our teaching is and then make adjustments?
- To meet mandatory guidelines?
- To compare schools to establish single criteria fair, good, better, best league tables?
Often this continuous assessment barrage results in our students’ natural curious instincts being blunted by teaching and learning approaches based on the belief that:
- teaching is telling
- learning is listening
- knowledge is an object.
The five E’s of learning from the Tribes Program are the paths students thrive on pursuing to discover new connections:
- Engage – lighting the fire; finding intersections and connections to want to discover more
- Explore – stoking the fire; having interested “want to”, “can do” and curious attitudes to “find out stuff”
- Explain – describing the fire; knowing how the various pieces of learning join together and present them
- Elaborate – using the fire’s heat; extending and applying knowledge learnt to new situations
- Evaluate – why was the fire hot; asking questions about the learning process
The key to a comprehensive and relevant assessment approach is to treat it as valuable feedback on what is happening in the five E’s and include all assessment in the learning process for both students and ourselves
A comprehnesive and relevant assessment approach must contain all of the following elements to be inclusive:
- formative
- anecdotal
- self
- peer
- summative
Formative – when monitoring student learning and understanding while the subject material is being learnt, be vigilant to be aware of Habits of Mind, Multiple Intelligences, Learning Styles, Emotional Intelligence, Thinker Keys, Bloom’s taxonomy, Williams taxonomy, SOLO taxonomy, dimensions of learning, thinking tools etc. Excellent feedback can be gained using these channels.
Anecdotal - while circulating around the class and during questioning and brainstorming sessions, develop a 'feel' for each and every student’s learning and understanding and compile a set of observations for every student. It is important to jot things down during the class to avoid losing it through busyness.
Self – when asking students to assess themselves against a set of criteria created and agreed to by the class, ensure they do so through their dominant multiple intelligence and learning style. A well constructed role play delivers the same information on learning and understanding as an essay does.
Peer – when students are assessing what their classmates have learnt and understand, ensure that their observations are developmental and non judgmental and consider the Multiple Intelligences and learning styles of each student. It is important for us to design a rubric that contains the set of agreed class assessment criteria that is relatively easy for students to use consistently.
Summative – when using this type of assessment it is important for us to know what each and every student knows and understands at the beginning of the topic. A class brainstorming session or a Think, Pair, Share in groups of 6 would provide a good opportunity for us to circulate and listen and learn. As the name implies, a final overall assessment is arrived at from considering the input from all the other forms of assessment. This is about far more than just an accumulation of knowledge; it relates to the five E’s of learning, what is value added for each child and a sense of wonderment and awe among the students to inspire further discovery.
Developing our assessment and reporting techniques as learning and teaching tools will benefit the entire school community.
“Kind works can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” Mother Teresa