5.1 Assess student learning
- Demonstrate understanding of assessment strategies, including informal and formal, diagnostic formative and summative approaches to assess student learning.
5.2 Provide feedback to students on their learning
- Demonstrate an understanding of the purpose of providing timely and appropriate feedback to students about their learning.
5.3 Make consistent and comparable judgements
- Demonstrate understanding of assessment moderation and its application to support consistent and comparable judgements of student learning.
At an independent all boys school whilst on professional experience in a year 2 classroom. I planned and implemented a teaching and learning cycle for the learning area of mathematics. This learning cycle ended with moderation of two student samples of work. The sample of work was taken from the summative assessment a 40 question multiple choice and calculative with varying difficulty to enable all students to demonstrate their level of understanding. Demonstrating my ability to meet standard 5.1 understanding of summative approaches to assess student learning. Summative assessment is essential to the teaching and learning cycle as it provides valuable data and feedback to inform future planning (Masters, 2018). It is a culmination of a unit of work and validates whether the teaching was effective (Masters, 2018). In this case my teaching was effective which indicates the students are ready to move onto new content. If the feedback informed me otherwise, I would then need to reteach the content and reflect on my teaching practices to understand why the students had not established connections. Feedback for the teacher is as important as feedback for students as we strive to continually improve and adapt to meet students’ needs (Masters, 2018).
I decided to then moderate one student who was working at a well above standard and the other student who was working at standard and still developing. Moderating the summative assessment work samples ensured I was consistent across the cohort with marking against the rubric (Adie et al., 2012). Demonstrating my capability of standard 5.3 understanding assessment moderation and its application to support consistent and comparable judgements of student learning. It also gave me a valuable opportunity to provide each student with effective feedback. Aligning with standard 5.2 demonstrate an understanding of the purpose of providing timely and appropriate feedback to students about their learning. Effective feedback explicitly points out student’s strengths and challenges of a completed learning task or assessment. It should be constructed in a positive manner to build rapport and trust in age appropriate language. Showing a student respect and consideration with a thoughtful comment. Feedback gives students the opportunity to reflect on their learning, create attainable learning goals and be accountable for their growth (Hornby & Greaves, 2022). I provided this feedback to the student verbally in a personal interaction and created a learning goal in collaboration with the student responding to the feedback (Hornby & Greaves, 2022).
I believe this unit of work was successful because of the consideration I used in the planning stages to reflect on the students as a cohort. Being a class of 18 boys I used a combination of teaching strategies for engagement and only allowing 20 minutes per task. I also ensured the learning was meaningful, making connections to real-life (Main & Pendergast, 2019) and I facilitated hands-on learning in pairs for support and collaboration (Main & Pendergast, 2019). This teaching and learning cycle provided me with valuable experience to inform my future instruction.
Please click link to artefact for standard 5. https://create.usq.edu.au/renee-cook/examples-of-teaching-impact-for-standard-5/
References
Adie, L., Klenowski, V., & Wyatt-Smith, C. (2012). Towards an understanding of teacher judgement in the context of social moderation. Educational Review, 64 (2), 223-240.
Hornby, G., & Greaves, D. (2022). Essential Evidence-Based Teaching Strategies Ensuring Optimal Academic Achievement for Students. Springer. https://link-springer-com.ezproxy.usq.edu.au/book/10.1007/978-3-030-96229-6
Main, K., & Pendergast, D. (2019). Teaching primary years: Rethinking curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. Taylor & Francis Group.
Masters, G. (2018). The role of evidence in teaching and learning. Australian Council for Educational Research.
