Professional Practice
5. Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning. 5.1 Assess student learning. I used many different assessment strategies to assess student learning. As I needed to report this learning to three mentors, I must use different forms of assessment to show me the student achievement on the topic being covered. Some of the assessment strategies I used were writing informal observations of student progress, collecting student work so I could develop an appropriate formative assessment piece, creating summative pieces from the knowledge I know from my previous formative assessment to support student learning and to provide students with challenges, I used student feedback in many of my lessons for not only my ongoing learning but to also understand where students learning is at and where it needs to go from there. I found using questionnaires and thumbs up, side or down worked well in being able to quickly assess students learning. As my final placement did not have any science books for students to keep a record of all their learning, I kept folders full of student work. This allowed me to revisit what students had completed and I was able to understand where each student was at. |
5.2 Provide feedback to students on their learning.
In order for students to improve their learning they need to be given effective feedback on their work so it helps them understand their strengths and areas needed for improvement. I used different strategies to report back on student learning, I did class discussions where I talked about what I had noticed within student work, and to go through the misconceptions students seemed to have developed within the topic. I gave one on one feedback by talking to students about their work, and I also gave written feedback on student work for them to read and improve areas. Within this feedback, I would also talk and state to students their strengths in their work. |
5.3 Make consistent and comparable judgements.
In my final placement block, I was given the opportunity to undergo assessment moderation with the partnership schools. Within this, I had to interpret the student data, and make judgements on whether their assessment strategies were supporting student achievement fairly and consistently in Physical Education where students had to strike a ball in cricket. What I found was that the educator had taken one piece of evidence per student, and had not taken into consideration the external variables that could negatively or positively influence the outcome of the assessment. From this, we provided examples on how they could improve their evidence of work samples which includes placing tape down so students who are bowling have to make sure the ball bounces where the tape is placed to minimise that variable. |
5.4 Interpret student data.
By undergoing the moderation assessment, I had to interpret the student data to firstly, compare whether the judgments made by the educator was fair and consistent, my initial thoughts on the evidence provided in the work samples, what evidence in the work samples aligns with the standard and how, what possible gaps are there within the evidence and suggestions for possible further evidence that might be needed to demonstrate achievement at the standard and how the assessment might be modified to better reflect the standard. Within my final placement, the water cycle activity was a formative assessment to see whether students had been able to grasp the concept of the water cycle and be able to apply that knowledge through a scientific investigation. What surprised me was that many students were able to demonstrate a sound understanding of how the water cycle works within nature and its importance for life here on Earth, however, I found out through my formative assessment, that students had not had sufficient previous background knowledge on hypotheses developments and how to conduct an observation and recording of results. By interpreting this student data, I was then able to modify my teaching practice and plan with the focus now being on students showing me that they are able to develop questions and predictions and use their observations and results to draw up conclusions. |
5.5 Report on student achievement.
Within my third year placement, I did a big unit on addition and subtraction of digits up to three units of measure (ie. hundredths, tenths and ones). At the end of my unit, I conducted a short summative test to see whether my students were able to show that they understood the concepts covered over the four weeks. These were then used to report on student achievement and showed that these selected students were working at levels where they could solve mathematical problems at a simple-unfamilar which allowed them to use extensive content knowledge, high level skills and processes and skills in some new contexts, whilst other students could solve mathematical problems at a complex-unfamiliar which allowed them to use skills in new contexts, showed very high level skills and processes and thorough content knowledge. |