LOTEHAT 2 P ROJECT I NVESTIGATION S HOWCASE 2012 Name: Linda Chen School Name: Firbank Grammar Investigation Title: Incorporate technology and online interactive procedures in the Chinese subject assessment process.

W HAT I DID : Teach Year 6 Class a module on “Self Introduction” using the on line teaching material “Happy Chinese “as a basis.(The Interactive White Board is necessary for this). ‍ I develops the Quiz activities on “Socrative” to test how well students learnt from their learning. Students use “The self-assessment Rubrics Version one” and Answer Sheet provided by me to rate their writing skills at the beginning of the project. I will collect the Rubrics at the end of the class. Students take photocopies of the test and model answers away to work on the questions they got wrong. The next week Students retake the test which is only on the questions they got wrong, but this time students will do the Peer -assessment in pairs with model answers provided by teacher: Students mark their peer’s work using ‘model answers’ including a mark scheme provided by the teacher. The work is handed back to its rightful owner and students each keep the worked solutions. Students use “The self-assessment Rubrics Version Two” to rate their Peer’s writing skills again. Then I hand out “the Version one” to students and ask students to compare the two Rubrics to identify if they have effectively improved their learning outcome after they practised the self/peer -assessment tasks in short period of time. Teacher hand out a survey on “How well students learn from these classroom activities in Chinese class this Year?” for students to complete. Teacher then collects the survey in order to identify how well student learn from the self/peer assessment tasks compared with the rest of the activities. I collates, consolidates and organises all the data for analysis.

W HAT I LEARNT : The average mark on the worksheet rose from around 45% to around 75% as a result of this strategy in 5 periods of teaching! From this investigation I learnt that the process of peer assessment has a number of striking advantages over having students’ work marked by the teacher. Students see alternative ways of answering the question or solving the problem; they see model answers or worked solutions and have to study these closely during the marking; and they see where marks are gained and lost. This makes the ‘goals’ clear. Students also have to make judgements about their peer’s work, which requires them to clarify their understanding of the subject matter, and the goals set. What is more, the goals are learned by induction from studying the concrete worked solutions; this is a powerful way to learn. Through this investigation I realized that self or peer assessment are an excellent way of getting students to do more work than I can mark, but it is much more than this. The method contains a ‘hidden message’. It teaches students how to avoid mistakes, and how to improve, but more than this it teaches them that mistakes are avoidable, and that improvement is possible. It shows students that achievement is not dependent on innate talent, but on doing the job well. It is difficult to overestimate the importance of this message, it has been shown to have a huge effect on student’s motivation and achievement. It does not matter if students do not make perfect judgements, and I need not arbitrate in every case. The desired outcome is that learners clarify their understanding, and set themselves goals for improvement, if this outcome is achieved that is often sufficient. Another advantage of incorporate ICT in Chinese writing is : The Apps sets up an excellent writing system, where students have to write in the exact right stroke order to be able to retrieve the characters from the system. This provided the solution for teachers if they wish to make sure each individual student is writing in the correct stroke order.

W HERE TO FROM HERE : I noticed that the low achiever’s interest is sometimes undermined by the grading at the beginning of the project. So I will make effort to prepare students to enter into the task with the right spirit. The standards contain theory and a practical analysis. It was also good to see the theory explicitly stated behind the teaching practice as well as to get to know better the students that I teach, and how they learn. I personally will continue to reflect and think about my professional practices and use the program standards to improve my teaching practice in the future.