Student Learning

Multi Domain Assessment Tasks - Healthy Lifestyles Poster

LOTE and Thinking Processes, Level 4

This multi domain task and other presented in this section were developed by teachers for teachers.

Students select appropriate text or captions from a chart to produce a healthy lifestyle poster in the target LOTE. They then display their posters to the class and explain in English why they have chosen the particular text and images for the poster.

Design guidelines

Design question 1: What is the purpose of the assessment?

Purpose
Primary purpose: Assessment OF learning

Reflection
The purpose of the task is assessment OF learning, an evaluation of what students know, understand and are able to do as a result of the learning and teaching program.

What I learn about student levels of performance on this task will also provide me with information that I can use in shaping my future learning and teaching program.

Design question 2: Which domains, dimensions, standards and levels did the learning and teaching program focus on?

Purpose Reflection
Focus domains, dimensions and levels in the learning and teaching program

Level 3 Health Sciences
Health knowledge and promotion

Students have learned about healthy and unhealthy lifestyles and the factors associated with these in a unit conducted partly in English and partly in the target LOTE. They are familiar with the vocabulary and expressions related to diet, exercise and other daily routines in both English and the target LOTE and have applied this knowledge by working with me to design and conduct a lifestyle survey of community speakers of the target LOTE.
Levels 3 Thinking Processes
Reflection, evaluation and metacognition 		To help them, students have experimented with different ways of eliciting, collating and organising information. They have practised problem solving, using a range of thinking tools, to organise their ideas. They are accustomed to presenting their work in public and have been taught to verbalise the reasoning behind the decisions and choices they make, in both LOTE and other discipline domains.
Levels 4 LOTE
Communicating in a language other than English 		Students have engaged with a variety of short or modified texts including charts, advertising slogans and promotional brochure. They have learned to use these as models in their own writing and adapt them as appropriate. In particular, in preparation for the current task, their attention has been drawn to expressions and verb modalities and forms of address used for attracting attention and giving advice. They also know how to access bilingual dictionaries and are familiar with drafting, checking and correcting their written work.

Design question 3: Which domains, dimensions, standards and levels will this assessment task focus on?

Purpose
LOTE - Communicating in a Language other than English.
Level 3 Thinking Processes - Reasoning processes and enquiry, Reflection, evaluation and metacognition.

Reflection
I have already assessed my students’ knowledge of healthy and unhealthy lifestyles, on which the Health Sciences unit has focused. The poster will allow me to assess how well students can extrapolate from the knowledge acquired in this unit to produce a short piece of writing on a health-related topic. The writing will give students an opportunity to apply what they have learned in their LOTE class about the structures, expressions and forms of address appropriate for communicating a simple health-related message to community speakers of the target LOTE. I want to assess their ability to verbalise in English the thinking processes that they have gone through in designing their poster, and the reasons behind their choice of both content, for example, health enhancing strategies and particular language forms used to express their message.
Opportunities also exist here to assess knowledge skills and understandings associated with the Interpersonal Learning domain, given that students do their initial preparation for the task in groups. However since students have already been assessed and performed satisfactorily in this domain in conducting and analysing their survey, I will not make Interpersonal Learning the focus of this particular task.

Design question 4: What specific knowledge, skills and behaviours will this task focus on?

Purpose
Thinking Processes - Reasoning processes and enquiry

  • ability to solve a problem, for example, how to persuade a particular audience to adopt healthy habits by matching appropriate health enhancing strategies to unhealthy behaviours, bearing in mind the particular group’s age and social context.

Thinking Processes - Reflection, evaluation and metacognition

  • ability to state reasons for strategies chosen and for language forms through which messages are expressed.

LOTE - Communicating in a language other than English

  • ability to use vocabulary structures and forms of address appropriate for the chosen audience
  • ability to check and self correct their work.

Reflection
In order to decide what I am looking for as part of student performance, I need to be very clear about the knowledge, skills, and behaviours that this task will focus on. It is also important that the students understand what I am looking for, and I will communicate this to my students in the guidelines and assessment criteria I have prepared for the task.

Design question 5: What will be the key features of the task?

Purpose
Students work individually or in groups to complete a chart in which unhealthy behaviours identified in a previously conducted lifestyle survey will be matched to a list of possible consequences in the target LOTE, prepared by the teacher.

Following this session, each student prepares a simple poster with pictures and appropriate captions in the target LOTE for the purpose of encouraging more healthy diet, exercise or other lifestyle choices amongst one group of survey respondents, for example, children, mothers, and older people.
Students are encouraged to draw on the language from the chart and to use dictionaries for this task, which can be produced on paper or online, and may contain pictures.

Students then display the draft poster to the class and comment orally in English on the thinking they engaged in when planning both the content and the format of their poster using a set of Thinking Guidelines which they fill out before they present their work.

Students revise their work based on teacher and peer feedback.

Students will have 2.45 hours of class time to complete the various components of this task, divided as follows:

  • 30 minutes for collaborative chart completion
  • One hour for individual drafting of the poster
  • 30 minutes to complete the thinking guidelines
  • 15 minutes for each student to display and comment on their poster
  • 30 minutes to edit and produce the final version of the poster.

Reflection
The chart is to be completed before designing the poster and will give students an opportunity to revise the LOTE vocabulary and structures from the recent Health Sciences unit. It will act as stimulus material for them to think about what they will write.

This piece of writing requires students to produce meaningful messages addressed to a real audience, for example, a group of respondents targeted in a previous Health Survey and will highlight to students the importance of thinking about the impact of their message on a particular group of readers. The length requirements for the text of the poster could vary, depending on the distance of the target LOTE from English and the background of the learners.

As well as indicating how much students have achieved (Assessment OF Learning), the task will have an important diagnostic function (Assessment FOR Learning), allowing me to assess each student’s strengths and weaknesses in both LOTE and Thinking processes, and to decide which areas I need to work further on.

The Thinking Guidelines (PDF - 13Kb) will help students verbalise the thinking problem solving and decision making they have engaged in when planning for and carrying out the task.

Students are also given a Student Brief (PDF - 19Kb), a template for a Healthy Lifestyles Chart (Word - 37Kb) and an Assessment Rubric (PDF - 23Kb) to assist them in planning and producing their poster.

Design question 6: What key features of student performance am I expecting to see? What evidence am I looking for?

Standard
Level 3 Thinking processes - Reasoning processes and enquiry
At level 3 students apply thinking strategies to organise information and concepts, including problem solving activities. They provide reasons for their conclusions.

Key features and evidence
Ability to select strategies appropriate for addressing a specific problem, for example, how to persuade a particular audience to adopt healthy habits.

Criteria or rubric
  At the Level  
Poster indicates only one problem behaviour and some health advice, but the link between the two may be unclear Poster indicates one or more problem behaviour(s) with clear links to health enhancing strategies Poster indicates a number of problem behaviour(s) with clear links to advice and solutions which show sensitivity to age and cultural context of target group

Level 3 Thinking processes - Reflection, evaluation and metacognition
At Level 3 students identify strategies they use to organise their ideas, and use appropriate language to explain their thinking. They identify and provide reasons for their point of view and justify changes in their thinking.

Key features and evidence
Ability to state reasons for poster design decisions, including content and form of the message.

Criteria or rubric
  At the Level  
Has difficulty articulating reasons for choice of content (health advice) and the language forms and images used to deliver the message Gives brief reasons for choice of advice and language and or images used to deliver the message Offers an elaborate well-reasoned account of why the particular strategy and language forms have been selected and relates these choices to the characteristics of the reader or audience

Standard
Level 4 LOTE - Communicating in a language other than English Writing in short sentences or paragraphs students express themselves in a range of contexts and are sensitive to the audience and purpose of the writing. Using print and electronic resources, they draft, self-correct, access dictionaries, check script and present written products.

Key features and evidence
Ability to use vocabulary structures and forms of address appropriate for a promotional poster.

Criteria or rubric
  At the Level  

Chooses some relevant words and expressions from the chart or other sources but without adapting them for the target audience

The message may be difficult to follow

Makes good use of target language models, adapting them appropriately for the target audience

Message is clear but not always accurate

Draws appropriately on the language models provided, but also uses new language forms creatively

Message is clear, accurate and effective

Key features and evidence
Ability to check, edit and correct the text.

Criteria or rubric
  At the Level  
Needs teacher assistance both to identify problems with the text and to make revisions Able to recognise problems with the text and make a number of revisions, although teacher assistance may be required for some amendments Independently checks and makes substantial revisions to the text, responding appropriately to feedback provided

Reflection
I was able to describe the expected characteristics of performance at, below and above the level, by starting with the key features, that is, the evidence of achievement that I wanted to see in the completed assessment task. I then asked, ‘What would performance at the level look like? What would performance below and above the level look like?’

All elements of the task are reflected in the assessment criteria as set out in the rubric.

The process used to develop this multi domain assessment tasks was based on sound design principles and guidelines. Detailed information on this design process can be found on the Multi domain assessment tasks page.