Timely Assessment Information

We have had lots of fun over the last few months thinking about how to share timely assessment information with parents and caregivers. We pulled out Julia Atkins (What, Why, How) model to surface our beliefs (What) about assessment, the principles (Why) surrounding those beliefs to make informed decisions about the assessment practices (how) we might use. What became apparent was we believe the learner needs to be at the centre or heart of any assessment practice. Hattie's top effect size (1.4) is self grading - how are we utilising this knowledge in our current practices?



Much of our dialogue of late has been to question how the mid year summative call on achievement is presented to learners and parents. We asked a group of year 5-8 students about what they liked about their previous School reports. One individual said 'I like the general comment because it says nice things about me'. That made me think should students have to wait until half way through the year and the end of the year to hear nice things about themselves? Another comment from a year 6 child was 'I like to know if I am where I should be'. You can't argue with that, however why again should students wait till half way through the year to know if they are on track. We have listened to parent voice too to understand what they want to know and how they like that information presented. The general consensus is I want to know if my child is where they should be, putting effort, had friends and is happy at School.

So how timely is our assessment information to parents? Is it ok for parents to wait several weeks for the hard copy portfolio to go home at the end of a term?

Recent changes to the way we report to parents is the inclusion of next steps and ways parents can help their child at home. The challenge is to ensure these types of conversions last beyond the event of sending the report home or co-constructing 'ways to help at home' at a student/parent conference. We believe the space for such reporting needs to be online. All three relevant parties have a view and edit capability to add to the report. If a hard copy of the report is required it can be simply printed. If the conversation needs to continue it can continue and more next steps and ways home is supporting the learning added as time goes on.

Wiki Educator Taster Session

I was involved in a really valuable session this week with Mark Osbourne who ran a wikieducator taster session for a group of our senior leadership. I whole heartedly agree with the vision and principles behind wiki educator, where content is added with the intent of contributing to a wider educational audience and where sharing and collaboration is encouraged through individuals being able to add to, shape, remix and blend content so that it potentially continues to evolve.
Check out how Warrington School is using wikieducator

Managed Learning Environments

Yesterday was an interesting day. Had the opportunity to find about LAMs - an online course and lesson planner, exe - similar tool for teachers to design learning material for lesson or course sequences, Moodle - a Learning Management System predominantly used in secondary schools and lastly Maharas e-portfolio applications.
Creating content is a time consuming task, teachers all over the globe and throughout New Zealand are creating and recreating similar kinds of material. Would a different and much needed approach be to first gain national consistency around key learning progressions in student speak. Rich digital material could then be linked to specific learning intentions e.g digital learning objects, flash animations, artifacts, games etc that students self select. Isn't our goal for students to know how they are going?, where they are going? and where to next? Should the students not be more empowered to own this learning process more. Is it extremely motivating for students to select their next learning goal and work towards achieving it because they are owning the process. A student who requests an assessment to check in on how they are going is a huge constrast to the assessment being done to a student.
I am sure the benefits would be two fold as I am constantly hearing that teachers need support in developing content knowledge. Let's put the learner more in the driving seat, as Hattie suggests students raise the bar more for themselves as to their next learning steps than teachers.
The rich material is there, let's stop working in isolation on this and gain the clarity nationally around these progressions. Then if more writing of content is required in certain areas it can be developed and added to a depository that all teachers across NZ could benefit from.
The literacies is a great place to start - the numeracy is there and assTTle has put huge effort into the writing matrices. Let;s get kid speak around it and get better about showing kids exactly where they are and what the next steps look like.