PoLT Online Professional Learning Resource – Principle 5

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Components unpacked

5.1 - Assessment practices reflect the full range of learning program objectives

This component involves teachers designing assessment tasks that require students to demonstrate knowledge and skills at many levels including lower order processes such as basic comprehension and higher order processes such as synthesis and evaluation. It involves the assessment of a variety of forms of knowledge and practice such as reasoning skills, values and orientations.

This component is demonstrated by teachers:

• using a variety of methods to assess student understandings at various points in a unit, including open ended questioning, checklists, project work, problems, practical reports, role plays
• assessing a range of types of understanding and practice, including knowledge of processes, conceptual ideas, the way the learning is used and practiced and different aspects of practice such as fluency, accuracy and capacity to innovate
• ensuring assessment incorporates a range of levels of thinking (comprehension, analysis)
• monitoring student perceptions and attitudes as well as knowledge and skills
• using a variety of reporting modes for assessment, including project reports using posters, multimedia, or student presentations, end of unit tests, reports of investigations and responses to set problems.

The component is NOT demonstrated when:

• assessment involves two or three types of task only and is mainly in written format (eg. worked problems, practical reports, end of unit test)
• judgments are made on the basis of presentation, for instance on the layout of reports, rather than demonstration of the ability to extend ideas
• assessment focuses mainly on low-level factual information and straightforward comprehension, with few opportunities for students to demonstrate application or synthesis of key ideas.

Examples to illustrate the component.

• Students keep reflective journals. Time is provided at the end of a session for teachers and students to reflect on progress, problems encountered and solved and to consider how things could be done differently or the same.
• A variety of assessment methods (summative and formative) is used to gauge understanding and to give students the opportunity to present their work/information in a variety of ways.
• Students present their understandings of the water cycle as a narrative, an annotated drawing, a role play etc.
• Rich assessment tasks are devised that are authentically embedded and are not seen as an ‘add on.’
• A model of a goldfields mining device is used to assess research skills (reading), planning, constructing, testing, evaluating skills (Technology), presenting (Speaking and Listening) and Procedural Writing Skills (writing about how they went about the process).
• Students in Chinese language classes design appropriate questions for interviewing elderly Chinese people in Nursing Homes about the daily routines of elderly people.
• Students develop codes of conduct or appropriate sporting behaviour principles for their physical education classes.

5.2 - The teacher ensures that students receive frequent constructive feedback that supports further learning

Appropriate feedback has been found to be critically important in improving student outcomes. Feedback by its nature should be aimed at supporting the learning process, should be ongoing and timely, and provide advice on ways forward for students. Feedback can be provided by other students, or through community engagement.

This component is demonstrated by teachers:

• providing feedback on tasks that challenges students to review, reflect on, and refine their understandings at various points in a learning sequence
• giving timely feedback, acknowledging areas well handled and suggesting areas for improvement
• structuring feedback to support further learning
• organising for feedback from a variety of audiences.

The component is NOT demonstrated when:

• judgments about students’ understandings are fed back only in formal, summative assessment situations without the opportunity for students to refine and develop understandings on the basis of such feedback
• little feedback is provided to assist students to understand why their responses were not rewarded (marked incorrect).

Examples to illustrate the component.

• Students share their reflections on what they are doing with a small group of class members at the end of the teaching session. The other students provide feedback and ask questions to clarify what has been learned.
• Through the teaching session, the teacher, when circulating, comments of the work in progress and provides additional assistance and clarification as necessary.
• Students participate in a community display. Feedback is provided during the planning phase by the teacher and by students with organisational responsibilities, and through responses from the public at the display.

5.3 - The teacher makes assessment criteria explicit

This component involves the encouraging the development of shared understanding of the assessment tasks.

This component is demonstrated by teachers:

• providing an explicit list of learning outcomes at the outset of a unit of work
• providing the criteria for assessing each outcome prior to students undertaking each assessment task
• leading discussions with students in which the criteria appropriate for different levels of performance on tasks are generated and clarified
• providing feedback to students concerning their performance in relation to explicit criteria.

The component is NOT demonstrated when:

• assessment tasks are not included in documentation provided to students
• assessment criteria are generated after a task is submitted
• assessment is mainly based on scores on tests in which items are not constructed to represent clear criteria
• the type of items on tests has not been signalled to students and they have not had the opportunity to work at the competencies assessed.

Examples to illustrate the component.

• In year 9, students are set an analytical exercise on the global economy. The task sheet is accompanied by a self-assessment sheet using the same rubric that is to be used by the teacher to assess the exercise when it is completed. As well as explaining the task, the teacher worked through the rubric with the students clarifying any issues or misunderstandings.
• In a year 7 Science class, before students begin an experiment, they are invited to brainstorm what an acceptable practical report would be like and what a better than acceptable and a less than acceptable practical report would be like. These three sets of descriptors then become the basis for peer and teacher assessments when the work is completed.
• At the end of a History research assignment, the teacher invites each student to sit with him/her while the work is being assessed to provide immediate feedback and to allow the student to contribute their thoughts about what they had learned.

5.4 - Assessment practices encourage reflection and self assessment

This component involves the active involvement of students in the assessment process.

This component is demonstrated by teachers:

• providing assessment instruments for self and peer monitoring
• discussing the learning process explicitly with students
• providing tools that make explicit for students their understandings
• providing opportunities to review prior ideas and compare them with current understandings.

The component is NOT demonstrated when:

• assessment is presented as the teacher’s prerogative and there is little attempt to engage students in making judgments about their own learning
• the assessment criteria are hidden and/or arbitrary
• assessment occurs infrequently and is not integrated into the learning process.

Examples to illustrate the component.

• Students are given the intended learning outcomes for a sequence and these are referred to frequently during the unit. At the end of the unit students assess how much they have learnt and which tasks contributed most to their learning.
• Peer assessment and portfolio assessment are used to encourage students to think about their learning.
• Students are provided with opportunities for self and peer assessment using a set of student /teacher negotiated criteria.
• Students present their projects to the class after completing small group peer, and/or self-assessment.
• Students are encouraged to maintain a portfolio of assessable pieces of work. Whilst the portfolio would contain some compulsory whole class pieces, students could make decisions about other pieces to be included, such as a selection of writing.

5.5 - The teacher uses evidence from assessment to inform planning and teaching

This component requires the use of formative assessment to provide information for the teacher to adjust tasks and strategies to ensure that the teaching and learning program is responsive to student learning needs and builds on prior knowledge and skills. Teaching sequences and teaching strategies need to be sufficiently flexible to respond to information coming from both informal and formal assessment.

This component is demonstrated by teachers:

• using a variety of methods to assess student understandings, at various points in a unit, including open ended questioning, checklists, project work, problems, practical reports, role plays
• strategically monitoring student understandings by circulating during practical or project work and discussing this with individuals
• probing student understandings and perspectives early in a learning sequence to help plan subsequent teaching sessions
• reviewing understandings from previous teaching sessions before proceeding with work
• monitoring constantly and strategically to determine how best to respond to the class.

The component is NOT demonstrated when:

• lesson plans are strictly followed (perhaps because of time constraints) and unexpected difficulties in understanding are glossed over
• units are planned without embedding opportunities to probe and respond to student understandings
• student understandings are not informally monitored and responded to
• a lesson sequence continues despite evidence that many students have already achieved the target understandings.

Examples to illustrate the component.

• A LOTE teacher, while marking students’ work, discovers that most students haven’t quite grasped the use of a particular sentence structure. He revises the teaching plan to incorporate more activities that would help to reinforce the structure.
• Student conceptions are probed early in a topic, to help plan subsequent tasks and activities.
• A set of activities are used as prompts at the beginning of a Year 7 unit on chemical science, which challenges students to explain gas behaviour in terms of a particle model. Their responses and questions are used to plan subsequent teaching sessions.
• A year 4 teacher arranges a collection of soil from various parts in the school ground, and after examination initiates a discussion about what differences were found, and what was noticed. This leads into a series of questions students ask about soil, and animals, which are then sorted and agreed by the class to form the basis of a set of further explorations of soil.
• A Year 7 astronomy unit is changed drastically once it becomes clear, on the basis of diagnostic assessment, that students have covered much of the work in their primary school program. The teacher uses a discussion based around student knowledge and interest to generate a revised plan.
• The teacher constantly monitors student responses and adjusts strategies according to this.
• A teacher stops a teaching session on heat when it becomes clear that most students in her class confuse heat and temperature, and believe that metal objects will have lower temperatures than wood, in the same room, judged by touch. She initiates a discussion, then a series of observations, to explore these ideas.
• A teacher realises a substantial minority of students are misunderstanding the method being used in an experiment. He pulls the class together for a discussion, ensuring that a range of voices is heard that clarify the situation.