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Improving Learning in Island
School Classrooms
Are pupils learning enough, and
learning it well in our classrooms – and how can we tell?
Can our teachers not only measure the progress made by students,
but also identify their learning needs and respond to them? How
are we trying to address these questions?
Tests and examinations are a
classic way of measuring student progress. These highly visible
forms of tracking progress, known as “summative
assessment” are also used by you the parents as a measure of
how well your child is doing.
But this is only part of the story. To
be truly effective, assessment should also be
“formative” – in other words, identifying and
responding to the students’ learning needs. In classrooms
featuring formative assessment, teachers make frequent, interactive
assessments of student understanding. This enables them to adjust
their teaching to meet individual student needs, and to better
help all students to reach high standards. Teachers also
actively involve students in the process, helping them to
develop skills that enable them to learn better.
Many of our teachers
incorporate aspects of formative assessment into their teaching.
Formative assessment is used as a framework for teaching,
teachers set up learning situations and guide students toward
learning goals, we are changing the way we define student
success.
Formative assessment builds students’
“learning to learn” skills by emphasising
the process of teaching and learning, and involving students as
partners in that process. It also builds students’ skills
at peer-assessment and self-assessment, and helps them develop a
range of effective learning strategies.
Students who are actively building their understanding of new
concepts (rather than merely absorbing information) and who are
learning to judge the quality of their own and their peers’
work against well-defined criteria are developing invaluable
skills for lifelong learning.
Look at the ARR system on the Gateway, we
are actively trying to get our students to self assess their
progress, to work to criteria upon which their skills are assessed,
to look at progress, not just judged to a grade or a level but
to look at the reflective feedback. Different types of
assessment are set across the curriculum to provide students
with challenge and the opportunity to show their
skills.
It
is about the learning journey that the students are on not just
about the grade outcomes. If we all focus on the grade and
miss the process of the skill development, we will limit the
learning that is happening.
Remember discuss with your child the
information that is on the ARR, get them to explain to you the
process they have been through on each of the different types of
assessment. We need you to become part of the formative
assessment. The more opportunities your child has to discuss
their learning the greater their understanding and the more
progress they will make.
If we took all the
grades / levels away would you still be aware of how your child
is doing?
If the answer is no, then you have not
had a learning conversation with your child. Use the
grades as a guide to the progress but the conversation as the
opportunity to allow your child to show you their strengths and
some areas of challenge. That way you will have a better
understanding of the way you can help your child further
develop.
Join in, go to the ARR, set a date with your child, let
them take you on a learning journey!
Trudy Lant - Vice
Principal
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