James Rasmussen discusses assessment for learning at Newlands College. James challenges educators to look at what assessment is being done in schools, and if this is really getting to the heart of the focusing inquiry of the teaching as inquiry cycle and changing teaching practice to meet the needs of students.
Hi I’m James Rasmussen, Deputy principal at Newlands College, I’ve been in that role for the last three years and before that I was a facilitator of an ICT PD contract. I’m here to talk a little bit about our journey with assessment for learning at Newlands College.
So what we recognised was at year 9 and 10 we needed to do a little bit of work, working around assessment for learning, and in particular using more effective assessment strategies to inform our practice, that was really our annual goal that we created.
So what we’ve done is we’ve created an annual goal, we’ve got a professional learning team that are working closely with faculties to look at what, we did a stocktake and looked at what assessment practices were taking place. And we found that there were a wide variety of practices from very useful effective strategies to ones where we needed to put a little bit of work in.
We feel that we’re on, we’re about six months through a three year journey so there is a lot of work to still be done however we feel that we are talking more about assessment at school, we are trying to tie it closely into the teaching as inquiry cycle. So basically what we’re trying to do is get teachers to recognise formative assessment as a really important part of figuring out where our students are at in order to be able to move them forward. We need to know where they are at for a start before we can effectively teach them.
We have used more standardised testing and we have tried to share the results of those tests more effectively across our school. So we’ve done testing in PAT and AsTTLe, we’ve used the ‘science thinking with evidence’ test from NZCER and we have also used another test ‘effective lifelong inventory’ which has come out of the UK. So we have used those tests to try and gather a bit of a profile of our learners and share that across our school.
We feel we are only just stepping into this territory and there is still a lot of work to do. But my challenge to the educators out there is to assess what, have a look and assess what assessment you are doing in your schools, figure out if you are really getting that focusing inquiry of the teaching as inquiry cycle and changing your practice to meet the needs of your students. So that’s a difficult challenge but one I’m hoping you’ll go well with.
James Rasmussen discusses assessment for learning at Newlands College. James challenges educators to look at what assessment is being done in schools, and if this is really getting to the heart of the focusing inquiry of the teaching as inquiry cycle and changing teaching practice to meet the needs of students.
Hi I’m James Rasmussen, Deputy principal at Newlands College, I’ve been in that role for the last three years and before that I was a facilitator of an ICT PD contract. I’m here to talk a little bit about our journey with assessment for learning at Newlands College.
So what we recognised was at year 9 and 10 we needed to do a little bit of work, working around assessment for learning, and in particular using more effective assessment strategies to inform our practice, that was really our annual goal that we created.
So what we’ve done is we’ve created an annual goal, we’ve got a professional learning team that are working closely with faculties to look at what, we did a stocktake and looked at what assessment practices were taking place. And we found that there were a wide variety of practices from very useful effective strategies to ones where we needed to put a little bit of work in.
We feel that we’re on, we’re about six months through a three year journey so there is a lot of work to still be done however we feel that we are talking more about assessment at school, we are trying to tie it closely into the teaching as inquiry cycle. So basically what we’re trying to do is get teachers to recognise formative assessment as a really important part of figuring out where our students are at in order to be able to move them forward. We need to know where they are at for a start before we can effectively teach them.
We have used more standardised testing and we have tried to share the results of those tests more effectively across our school. So we’ve done testing in PAT and AsTTLe, we’ve used the ‘science thinking with evidence’ test from NZCER and we have also used another test ‘effective lifelong inventory’ which has come out of the UK. So we have used those tests to try and gather a bit of a profile of our learners and share that across our school.
We feel we are only just stepping into this territory and there is still a lot of work to do. But my challenge to the educators out there is to assess what, have a look and assess what assessment you are doing in your schools, figure out if you are really getting that focusing inquiry of the teaching as inquiry cycle and changing your practice to meet the needs of your students. So that’s a difficult challenge but one I’m hoping you’ll go well with.
James Rasmussen discusses assessment for learning at Newlands College. James challenges educators to look at what assessment is being done in schools, and if this is really getting to the heart of the focusing inquiry of the teaching as inquiry cycle and changing teaching practice to meet the needs of students.
Hi I’m James Rasmussen, Deputy principal at Newlands College, I’ve been in that role for the last three years and before that I was a facilitator of an ICT PD contract. I’m here to talk a little bit about our journey with assessment for learning at Newlands College.
So what we recognised was at year 9 and 10 we needed to do a little bit of work, working around assessment for learning, and in particular using more effective assessment strategies to inform our practice, that was really our annual goal that we created.
So what we’ve done is we’ve created an annual goal, we’ve got a professional learning team that are working closely with faculties to look at what, we did a stocktake and looked at what assessment practices were taking place. And we found that there were a wide variety of practices from very useful effective strategies to ones where we needed to put a little bit of work in.
We feel that we’re on, we’re about six months through a three year journey so there is a lot of work to still be done however we feel that we are talking more about assessment at school, we are trying to tie it closely into the teaching as inquiry cycle. So basically what we’re trying to do is get teachers to recognise formative assessment as a really important part of figuring out where our students are at in order to be able to move them forward. We need to know where they are at for a start before we can effectively teach them.
We have used more standardised testing and we have tried to share the results of those tests more effectively across our school. So we’ve done testing in PAT and AsTTLe, we’ve used the ‘science thinking with evidence’ test from NZCER and we have also used another test ‘effective lifelong inventory’ which has come out of the UK. So we have used those tests to try and gather a bit of a profile of our learners and share that across our school.
We feel we are only just stepping into this territory and there is still a lot of work to do. But my challenge to the educators out there is to assess what, have a look and assess what assessment you are doing in your schools, figure out if you are really getting that focusing inquiry of the teaching as inquiry cycle and changing your practice to meet the needs of your students. So that’s a difficult challenge but one I’m hoping you’ll go well with.
Helen Timperley, Professor of Education at The University of Auckland, talks about professional development that makes a difference to student learning. Helen talks about the importance of combining careful assessment and analysis with pedagogical content knowledge, and ways teachers can gain this knowledge through cycles of inquiry into their practice.
Lynda Walsh-Pascoe has been teaching physical education by video conferencing since 2002. She explains how the virtual learning network's video conferencing (VC) connections provide valuable learning experiences for students in rural areas. Lynda gives examples of how VC is used, including the use of video footage to assist in assessment.
Kate Le Fever describes how SOLO is a process for enabling students to gauge where they are at with their learning and plan next steps. At Kate's secondary school they have rolled SOLO across year 9 to 11 in a number of different subjects. This enabled the teachers to have a shared language of learning and made a connection across the different subject areas.
