“Assessment is the bridge between teaching and learning….It is only through assessment of some kind that you know what’s been taught has been learned” Dylan Wiliam, Formative Assessment
Watch the video above as Dylan Wiliam reviews the nature of formative assessment and how teachers can use it to gain better insights into student learning and achievement.
The aim of this module is to examine the assessment approaches that consistently have a positive impact on student learning.
By the end of this module, participants will have:
Using the AITSL Professional Standards for Teachers Standard 5, identify the ways in which you (or your staff) are currently assessment capable and where you wish to strengthen your (or your teachers') capacity. Share with a partner. Reflect on team community. Identify strengths and connections amongst your team. The connections that are made here might highlight possible mentors and learning partners within the team.
Examine the learning provocation from the list below that might best strengthen your capacity in the AITSL standard you identified. Use the Note making Template to record your thinking.
A lifetime of working in the field has convinced Geoff Masters that assessment in education has become over-conceptualised and over-complicated. The fundamental purpose of assessment in education he believes, is to establish and understand where learners are in an aspect of their learning at the time of assessment. There is no other purpose.
In this clip, Dylan Wiliam reviews the importance of giving learners effective feedback as an integral component of formative assessment.
Moderation is the process of teachers sharing their expectations and understanding of standards with each other in order to improve the consistency of their decisions about student learning. In these pages you can find information on the theory of moderation, and practical advice on the ways schools might go about setting up moderation processes.
The major argument of this presentation is to move the discussion away from data towards interpretations, from student outcomes to teaching successes and improvements, and from accountability models located about schools to located first in the classroom to support such evidence-based teaching and learning.
Staff at Our Lady of the Southern Cross, Wyndham Vale discuss how they use Google forms to capture and track student learning and how this supports report writing
In groups of two or three, share the connections you made between your readings and your current thinking. Consider who, in your team, you could partner with or have as a mentor.
From your group’s dialogue, identify an aspect of assessment for improvement in practice. Design a simple plan to achieve the improvement that you have identified.
How has this learning impacted on your own area of research/inquiry?
Teams post their work/learning on the project google+ community and then respond to someone from their own team and another team’s work using the ladder of feedback.