22 December 2016

Measuring What Matters...

Term 2 last year had me pondering some of my thinking around measuring what matters. The recent exercise of pin pointing where our learners are currently at against the National Standards using an Overall Teacher Judgement has provoked a lot of discussion, debate and what I perceived, teachers own lack of confidence/trust in their ability to perform an OTJ.

Evidence = triangulation: observations, conversations, work samples. Assessment is often linked to more formal assessments such as running records, standardised tests and sweeping assessment tools.

Problem solving, critical thinking, social and emotional intelligence.

Timeliness of assessment is vital - what does this evidence tell us about our work as educators? What are we doing well? What could we improve on? How can we develop our teaching approaches to meet what the needs of the children are.

Misuse of evidence/ assessment comes from one off snapshots that do not always reflect the depth of thinking  going on in the process of learning. It should not be about achievement but the progress that children are making. High achievers do not necessarily make steady progress.

It is important to ensure that we are not locked into a process of gathering data for data's sake. Strategy/knowledge stages, scores and curriculum achievement levels do not give enough of a story about the learning.  Assessment needs to be ongoing and actively involving each learner. Assessment needs to be an integral part of the teaching and learning process.

"Teachers who use classroom assessments as part of the process of learning help ALL of their students do exactly what the most successful students have learned to do for themselves." - Thomas Guskey