Understanding Assessment in PSSD
Understanding Assessment in PSSD
Welcome!
Welcome to Prairie Spirit School Divisions' Assessment site! This space has been created to help inform parents about assessment practices in PSSD. Feel free to browse the pages to learn about assessment, grading, and reporting!
Note: We've added a video on the grade 1-9 grading scale to the "How We Report" page of this site.
Assessment 101: The Basics
There are so many aspects to a quality assessment program that are outlined on the web pages in this site. Like most disciplines, assessment has some terms that are helpful to know in order to fully understand the topics being discussed. Below is a short list of terms that it will be helpful to know.
Useful Definitions
Assessment: the act of gathering information to understand student learning needs and make appropriate planning/teaching decisions.
Grading: summarizing student achievement into a score or grade. This is a form of summative feedback.
Reporting: sharing student progress with others, typically students and parents/guardians.
Curriculum: formalized document written by the Saskatchewan Ministry of Education that outlines, among other things, the purpose of a course, the aims of a course, and what students are expected to know and be able to do by the end of a particular course.
Outcome: statements within the curriculum that detail what a student should know and be able to do by the end of a course.
Indicator: statements that help define the outcomes of a course. Indicators help define the depth and breadth of an outcome - what the outcome is asking for and what it is not. Indicators provide examples of the types of evidence that a student might provide to show they have met the outcome.
Formative Assessment: type of assessment that is focused on growth, typically given in the form of feedback (most often comments). Formative feedback typically involves helping a student understand how their evidence compares to the learning target and helps identify the next steps a student can take. There are typically no scores or grades associated with formative feedback.
Summative Assessment: type of assessment that compares student evidence to a scale to summarize achievement at a certain point in time. Typically summative feedback involves a score or grade.
Learning Target: description of what a student is expected to know and/or be able to do following a lesson/unit.
Success Criteria: statements, written in student friendly language, that students can check to determine for themselves whether or not they have hit the learning target. Descriptors that help explain what success might look like or sound like.
Scoring/Grading Systems
In addition to the terms noted above, it is helpful to understand the differences between two different grading systems that students and parents may encounter.
Point-counting assessment systems
The traditional scoring system that many people think of when they think of marking.
In this system there are a total amount of points to be earned on an assignment/exam/project and students earn points based on meeting the expected criteria.
Incorrect answers mean that points are lost.
In a well-organized point-counting system, questions should include a range of lower-order and higher-order levels of thinking that match with what is expected by the outcomes of the course. If this is not the case, scores can vary greatly from class to class even though student thinking is at the same level.
Scores are often reported as percentages. Total points earned is divided by total points available to arrive at a percentage.
Many parents will have grown up being communicated to using this system, and because of that feel comfortable communicating using percentages.
Weakness is that point-counting systems often require all students to demonstrate their learning the same way at the same time (everyone must do the same project, etc.), and are not flexible when it comes to scoring different types of evidence from different students (even when the evidence is related to the same outcome).
Defined levels of proficiency assessment systems
In this scoring system, points are not used. Instead a set of levels are defined. If student evidence meets the criteria for the level of proficiency, that level is awarded.
Each level that is used in the scale is defined with descriptors that list the characteristics needed to achieve that level.
In PSSD, the levels of academic achievement are defined by the level of thinking that is required to achieve the level.
The levels are defined in relation to the outcomes and indicators of the course.
Benefit is that by defining the levels there can be more agreement on which evidence fits into which level. The need to earn a certain amount of points is not the focus - the focus is on demonstrating higher levels of thinking.
Weakness is that this was not how parents have traditionally been communicated to when they were students and therefore need assistance understanding what is being communicated.
That last point is the major focus of this website!
Please explore the other pages in this site to understand how we assess, why we assess this way, and how we report. (You may want to check out our FAQ page as well if you have more questions!)