Developing effective faculty processes for quality assessment Welcome back .... these faculty sessions are going to take the learnings from the whole school session around principles of quality assessment and put them into proactice within your faculty context.

Assessment is about helping students to learn better Assessment is about helping students to learn better .... .... rather than just get a better grade. Quick recap from the previous session – the fundamental purpose of assessment is to improve student learning ... not just to allocate a grade or mark.

To collect information about students’ learning To make judgments about: quality of student learning quality of our teaching Remember when planning assessment processes within your faculty the key aim of any assessment activity must be to collect information about student learning so that it can inform your planning ... but also so that you can provide feedback to students in order to improve their learning. I like to call this session ... how to regain your weekends. So many teachers spend their time at home marking assessment tasks. My belief is that often this time is wasted as the tasks that are being marked don’t add any information to what you already know about a student’s achievement and in some cases even confuse your judgements about a student’s performance. ... I’m sure if asked you to identify the students in your class that are working above satisfactory or below satisfactory you could name them. However, how often does it happen that you could give an assessment task out and one of your high achievers flops ... and could be for many reasons – but often its because they had other tasks that took priority. Does their task provide you with an accurate reflection of what they know and can do? What do you do now with the “mark” they’ve been allocated?

Collaboratively develop common assessment practices Collaboratively plan teaching programs which clearly state the intended learning Collaboratively develop common assessment practices and how do we do that in a manageable and realistic way ... through collaborative planning and assessment. And that’s exactly what this session is about .... In this session you will be going through a step-by-step collaborative process to review your current assessment processes and identify where changes can be made to improve the quality of your assessment practices for teachers and students.

Bringing it all together What do we report? What do we record? What do we assess? What do we want students to learn? This is what we hope to cover during the next few sessions ... In this session we are going to focus on the first two .... and the next session we will look at the what we record and what we report? What do we want students to learn? Before we can start to think about assessment we need to have a clear picture of what it is we want students to learn and be able to do in our subject areas. once we have created a clear picture of what we want students to learn ... then we can start thinking about how we can assess whether they have learnt it or not. __________________________________________ What do we assess? We need to decide whether we will: assess all or some of the outcomes target certain aspects of our teaching and learning types of tasks formal or informal tasks theory vs practical What do we record? What methods do we use to record? School issues Professional development concerns Consistency of judgment What do we report? Some / all outcomes Do we aggregate outcomes/simplify/reword? What does the school require? Can we fit in with this? Is it a simple faculty decision?

Step 1: What do we want students to learn? Use handout # 2 – Key concepts and skills Identify the key concepts Define relationships Identify key skills Identify contexts for teaching concepts and skills Build a picture of what students need to learn If you remember back to the earlier presentation and the A of assessment we spoke about achievement and accountability. So as a faculty you need to be confident that you understand and can articulate what students need to learn and do in your subject area. When developing your assessment processes you need to look at the big picture presented within the syllabus. You need to first of all be able to articulate what learning expectations are prescribed in the syllabus and then translate those learning expectations into your planned programs. By creating a shared understanding within the faculty of the big picture of the learning expectations within your subject it will help your faculty better prioritise your focus for assessment. So as teachers we need to be clear about the WHAT we want our students to learn as well as the WHY it is important and then from that we can determine WHAT we should be assessing and WHY we have chosen to assess that? START FROM HERE: So let’s begin by unpacking the syllabus document to build a bigger picture of the learning in your subject. Select either Stage 4 or Stage 5 from one of the subject areas that are taught in your faculty. Use Handouts 2 to brainstorm the key concepts that need to be taught in that subject and the different contexts that these concepts can be taught through.

Context Context Context Context Concept 1 Concept 2 Concept 3 road safety PDHPE Stage 4 Concept 1 self identity Concept 2 making safe choices Concept 3 lifelong physical activity Concept 4 managing change Concept 5 understanding movement and skills Concept 6 taking action to promote health Context mental health So here’s one I prepared earlier for PDHPE – now Dion you haven’t got off scott-free here – this is a very basic overview that needs a bit more work! but it will give a sense of what this might look like. So I’ve identified 6 key concepts that need to be developed in Stage 4 PDHPE and I’ve recorded them in each concept box. I’ve then braisntormed the different contexts that these concepts could be taught through. So for example ... the concept of making safe choices could be taught through the road safety context ... but could also be taught through alcohol and other drugs, or even through games and sports. So once yoyu have recorded concepts and contexts in the relavant boxes you then need to identifiy where the relationships lie between the concepts and between contexts. Context alcohol and other drugs Context games and sports

Context Context Context Context Concept 1 Concept 2 Concept 3 road safety PDHPE Stage 4 Concept 1 self identity Concept 2 making safe choices Concept 3 lifelong physical activity Concept 4 managing change Concept 5 understanding movement and skills Concept 6 taking action to promote health Context mental health So here’s one I prepared earlier for PDHPE – now Dion you haven’t got off scott-free here – this is a very basic overview that needs a bit more work! but it will give a sense of what this might look like. So I’ve identified 6 key concepts that need to be developed in Stage 4 PDHPE and I’ve recorded them in each concept box. I’ve then braisntormed the different contexts that these concepts could be taught through. So for example ... the concept of making safe choices could be taught through the road safety context ... but could also be taught through alcohol and other drugs, or even through games and sports. So once yoyu have recorded concepts and contexts in the relavant boxes you then need to identifiy where the relationships lie between the concepts and between contexts. Context alcohol and other drugs Context games and sports

Context Context Context Context risk taking Skill 1 Skill 2 Skill 3 gymnastics PDHPE Skill 1 decision making Skill 2 communicating Skill 3 moving Skill 4 interacting Skill 5 problem solving Skill 6 composing Context risk taking Context dance Context food and nutrition

Unpacking learning expectations For each of the concepts and skills, identify the learning expectations described within the: outcomes learn to’s stage statements. Build a picture of how well students need to learn

Handout 4: PDHPE example Concept Respectful relationships Outcome 5.3, 5.6 Learn to: explore how the appropriate use of personal power can contribute to positive relationships Stage statement Demonstrates understanding and skills for healthy relationships Understanding movement 5.4, 5.5 experiment with the application of simple mechanical principles to enhance performance Can compose, perform and assess movement in games / gymnastics/ dance If we backward map this – what are we actually doing? We are taking what we believe is important for students to learn and then unpacking where this learning is described through the outcomes and content. From here we then develop assessment strategies that we can use during our teaching and learning programs to collect information on students level of achievement of this learning. Use Handout 4 to now unpack the concepts a little further by exploring what syllabus outcomes link to each concept and then which learn to’s from the content and what elements of the stage statements can you use to develop a picture of what the learning looks like. So if we look at this Stage 5 PDHPE example we can unpack the conept of respectful relationships in order to build a picture of what students should be learning about ... so if we go to the syllabus we know that Outcome 5.3 expects students to analyse factors that contribute to positive, inclusive and satisgying relationships ... when learning to do this students need to (according to the content) explore how the apporporiate use of power contributes to positive relationhsips. we can then look at the stage statements to confirm the learning expectations ... in this case it tells us students need to understand the skills for healthy relationships.

Pause the video now to complete Handout 4

Step 2: What do we assess? Map where concepts and skills are currently taught and assessed How/when are they currently assessed? Are there any gaps (e.g. concepts or skills not taught?) Are there opportunities to teach/assess multiple concepts or skills simultaneously? Does your current assessment program prioritise some concepts and skills over others? Build a picture of what learning is valued by assessment What we assess students on indicates what we value in terms of their learning. So we’re going to look more closely at what you currently assess and how you assess – and reflect on whether this represents the learning that you believe is most important in your subject? If so, why? If not, why not? So in your faculty groups now – go through your teaching programs and identify where the concepts and skills that you identified earlier are currently taught and assessed. As you are doing the mapping consider these questions. Pause the video as you complete this activity. where are the gaps, is there overlap where the same concepts or skills are assessed on a number of occassions? This can be a good thing as it allows students multiple opportunities to demonstrate their learning – but also can be problematic if subsequent assessment don’t add anything to the information you already have on a student. That’s enough for this session .... after lunch we’ll be coming back to go through the process of developing efficient assessment activities.