Getting to know students: informal and formal assessments
Play-based and inquiry learning supports teachers to know the child as a player and a learner. When engaging in play, students, regardless of their abilities or backgrounds, can engage in learning in ways which authentically support them to demonstrate what they know, understand and can do. Other ways teachers can collect information about their students is through conversations with families and more formalised assessment processes and tools.
The results from these tools add to teachers' knowledge of students, drawn from classroom observations and interactions and provide detailed and specific information to enable teachers to design and provide play-based and inquiry learning experiences that are differentiated and inclusive.
Available tools and resources
There are a number of tools and resources available to support Foundation teachers to develop accurate and useful learner profiles to inform instructional planning and program delivery, including:
Transition Learning and Development Statements (TLDS)
All students transitioning to school from kindergarten will have a
Transition Learning and Development Statement (TLDS). Completed by the Early Childhood educator together with the family and the student, the information contained in the TLDS provides Foundation teachers with individualised information about their students. This helps teachers get to know the students starting in their class, and to plan appropriate learning and teaching programs which support continuity of learning.
Further exploration of TLDS
The TLDS provides teachers with key insights about the student by:
- Summarising a student's learning and development
- identifying their individual approaches to learning and their interests
- indicating how the student can be best supported to continue learning.
The TLDS captures descriptions of the student's learning progress against the VEYLDF learning and development outcomes and the Victorian Curriculum F-2, as well as specific intentional teaching strategies to support the student's continuity of learning when they start school.
Other tools and resources for teachers to draw on
There are a number of other tools and resources that teachers can use in diverse ways to get to know the students in their class:
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English Online Interview is an online tool used to assess English skills of students in the Early Years of school (Foundation to Level 2). It assesses students across the three modes of English in the Victorian Curriculum F-10 – reading, writing and speaking and listening. The interview is one-to-one between a teacher and student, using texts and downloadable resources. Teachers record each student's responses directly onto the online system. This data is used to generate reports that provide an overview of student achievement and diagnostic information to inform program planning and resource allocation.
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Early ABLES (Abilities Based Learning and Education Support) is a strength-based observation tool used to assess student learning. It supports educators to provide a more individualised learning experience for children aged two to five years with disabilities and/or developmental delay and includes assessments that align with five of the learning and development outcomes of the VEYLDF.
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Literacy Teaching Toolkit is an online resource that supports teachers to implement the Victorian Curriculum F-10 and the VEYLDF. It offers practical advice and high impact teaching practices that improve outcomes in reading, writing and speaking and listening.
- The
Numeracy Focus Areas provide dynamic approaches to developing student numeracy across the following stages of learning
- Birth to Level 2
- Levels 3 to 8
- Levels 9 to 10
The guide is designed for school leadership teams, teachers, early childhood practitioners and families. The resources presented extend learning through practice and application across education and home settings. Numeracy is explored through six numeracy focus areas, developed from the Victorian Numeracy Learning Progressions and numeracy research.
Interacting with multiple layers of differentiated teaching
There are many connections between differentiated teaching strategies and play-based and inquiry learning that are evident and emerge organically as the play develops. In the following interactive video, Foundation teacher Kelly shares her practice and the "different layers within activities".
As you are watching this, listen to how she promotes high expectations for every child and think about how this practice encourages positive learning dispositions and intrinsic motivation for her students. Think about the teaching strategies that are evident in Kelly's practice by engaging with the interactive questions within the video.
Reflecting on Kelly's practice
In the above video, Kelly talks about how she incorporates "different layers within activities" to enable students with different abilities and learning needs to engage with shared learning intentions. As part of the interactive experience, there are prompts in the video that ask you to imagine some of the ways that you might differentiate the learning process, content and outcomes to respond to the specific needs of particular learners.
Through observing students engaged in play-based and inquiry learning, teachers find out more about students as learners. For example:
• what students freely choose to do,
• who they freely choose to do it with, and
• how they choose to do it.
These observations provide teachers with authentic evidence of students existing funds of knowledge, preferred ways of learning, dispositions and capabilities. When students are engaged in play-based and inquiry learning, the wider group of learners also engage with and build an understanding of each other. They learn about their differences, strengths, and ways to build an inclusive classroom community.