Tuesday, 14 June 2016

Assessment Reflections

With mid year reporting approaching, I have spent a lot of time with my learners one-to-one with testing in order to gather evidence to make mid year judgements.  This has been a great learning opportunity for myself with me having to learn and incorporate the forms of literacy and numeracy testing methods into my practice.

A wondering I had how we use this data from testing to inform a decision and it was not until we had a PD session where I was introduced to the following image:


This really helped me identify that while it is important to test against National Standards, this is only a part of my overall judgement and I should value the relationships and interactions I have with my learners equally if not more so.  A test can capture a snap shot of a learner's ability however that is a snap shot at a particular time or place and I need to be reflecting more on the daily encounters that I am having with my learners.  Otherwise I may miss opportunities such as:
  • A learner beaming with a huge smile as they can understand and utilise a specific strategy for adding two double digit numbers - something that they did not feel comfortable with at the beginning of the year.
  • A learner seeing the output of their determination to become a more confident reader and rushing out the door at home time to tell their parents that they have moved two reading levels.
  • A learner who told me at the beginning of the year that "they hated planning" but can now have conversations with other children about the importance of planning in their writing process.
The past few weeks I have learned a lot about my capability as a teacher however I think it has given me far more insight into my learners and how to plan for the remainder of the year.  Some of the conversations I have had with them while testing has opened up different ways of thinking for how to design this learning and with the skills I am building each week, I am now looking for ways in which to support them to their next goal and/or challenge.

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