1. Assessing outcomes: How do we know what students learn?
Ken Cruickshank
University of Sydney

2. Assessment in community languages schools
There is limited time for assessment
Teachers fear it may discourage student attendance
It is difficult to co-ordinate and mark assessment
There are few materials to assess second or heritage language learning

3. Assessment and Testing
Assessment is teachers gathering evidence and making judgments about student achievement.
Testing is a formal or informal type of assessment intended to measure a student’s knowledge, skill, aptitude

4. How do you assess your students?
What have you/ your school done this year?
How do you report feedback to parents/ students?
How do you make judgments about student progress?
What are the issues/ problems?

5. Types of Assessment
Diagnostic testing – what students know and do not know- at beginning of unit
Formative- often informal during a lesson or unit-often observation
Summative assessment – usually formal at the end of a unit – usually achievement tests – called discrete point such as testing vocabulary

6. Who do we assess for? Principal / executive Government and community
Parents
Students
Class teachers
Other teachers

7. What information do we need?
Parents
- how children are going
- how children compared with others
Teachers
- are children learning
- am I succeeding - what can I do better?
How effective is observation and talking with students and parents?

8. The NSW K-10 Languages Framework (2017) outlines what students should know and be able to do in languages

9. Assessment of learning helps teachers use evidence of student learning to assess achievement against outcomes and standards. Sometimes referred to as ‘summative assessment', it usually during a unit of work or at the end of a unit and may be used to rank or grade students.
Assessment for learning involves teachers using evidence about students' knowledge, understanding and skills to inform their teaching. Sometimes referred to as ‘formative assessment', it usually occurs throughout the teaching and learning process to clarify student learning.

10. Types of assessment
Assessment as learning occurs when students are their own assessors. Students monitor their own learning, ask questions and use a range of strategies to decide what they know and can do, and how to use assessment for new learning.
e.g. What did you learn?

11. Assessing Outcomes
Outcome - student responds to texts in a variety of ways LXX2-3C
Content - Students respond to texts using graphic, visual and digital supports in English or in (language) using simple statements, for example, reporting the findings of surveys on families, pets, likes and dislikes, sports and other activities using picture or column graphs to display result

12. So how do you assess their presentation?
Demonstrate a good and bad talk – get students to decide on THREE features of a good presentation
Use a simple grid that students can understand
Get students to record or video their presentation

13. Assessing outcomes - problems
Time for marking
Students not understanding what to do
Does it teach anything?

14. Assessing outcomes - benefits
Assessment can increase student motivation
Cater for mixed ability
Paents can know and see what children learn
Assessment can ‘flesh out’ textbooks
Assessment covers many aspects of language
It can help planning (high/ mid/ low achievement)

18. French progression

19. Passport for Languages

20. So what?
Students and parents will have a reliable and valid way of knowing student’s level of proficiency in listening reading speaking and writing
Students can take this passport to different schools when they move
We credit learning no matter where it occurs
Schools and teachers and governments get a clear idea of what students know – we can compare across languages
We can use the passport to accompany HSC results – learning a community language gets more status

21. How do you do it?
Look at the piece of student writing. The student was 17 and had been learning English for six months in Australia.
Look through and see what the student CAN and CANNOT yet do
Now check the two levels – level 3 and level 4 and decide which level you think the student is at.

22. So what?
You must give parents and students a clear idea of what children CAN do
Assess holistically – assess from big to small – focus on one or two issues – use different types of feedback
Assessment of outcomes is one way to combine language and cultural understanding
At the end of each term get students to demonstrate their learning and use this for assessment.