Assessment case studies from students

[Slide says Innovative assessment with coding in Maths]

Student: Well, Maths was like too much writing for what you actually did, cos, well, when I just did Maths in primary school, you get a question and it was just a number answer and that was it, and then getting higher and higher you get more and more writing.

So it more becomes English than Maths in my eyes and I'm like, I'm okay with doing Maths, just not when I have to do English and Maths.

Having an interest in something you do would just step up your participation by heaps. Because like writing, I'm not a fan of it, very low participation in it, but as soon as it comes to something I'm good at and I like, like making code, my participation is through the roof.

Numeric reasoning - you take your price sheets and there’s the starting price then there’s the either increase or decrease rate and what you have to work out and that's your new answers.

And my programme takes the starting price and it puts the increase or decrease plus the rate and it spits out the answer. You put in the number of parts you use to build your car and then it will give you an overall price of everything at the bottom.

So that covers my numeric reasoning standard as well as my Level 2 coding standard.

You have to make sure your answers are correct because even though the computer is doing it, you're telling the computer what to do.

Interviewer: How do you know your answer is correct?

Student: Because you have to work it out side by side. So you'll be writing a programme and it will say ‘dadada’ this and you have to go and actually do the Maths yourself to make sure that is correct. But once it is all correct, you don't have to do the Maths anymore cos you’ve already checked it.

I was getting mostly Achieveds that was because I was kind of skipping on the writing I'm not a fan of writing, but I had the knowledge to get probably get Merits to Excellences.

Interviewer: And now have you had any assessments back? That have been graded?

Student: With this one I got an Excellence, that because [unknown] writing, it's just Maths again for me. So it was easy.

When you write a programme, there's always problems, but if you can identify and explain how the problems like are caused and how you would fix it to get a perfect answer, that's kind of the same in order to show the extent of thinking.

I spoke to my teachers about the problems in the programme and how I would fix them to get the correct answers.

[Slide says Innovative assessment group projects]

Student: I'm part of the, the group because in my class we have one group that is working together and it's, it's 3 of us, and we're making a movie because we're really passionate about filming.

Interviewer: Are you quite happy about the group stuff?

Student: It's got its ups and downs because there was, there were, there were times where then they oh, all of us have made up excuses to not go and do something because either we can't be bothered or just we actually do have a reasonable excuse. But that made conflict. And since we're all friends it's really good to work in a group. Yeah.

Interviewer: So the conflict. You've resolved all the conflicts?

Student: Yeah. Yeah, it was because we ended up having a meeting with the teachers, but then we all just sorted it out in that meeting with all the teachers and they try and they try to link other assignments to you. It's not just it's not just our film, but Mr. Tilby, he gave me an assignment to do a scene analysis for a film which none of the other class students in the class, except for my group got because we're working on a film and we, we just got that out in about a week and we all got Excellences for it. And then you know

Interviewer: Because you’ve been doing lots of work on filming it.

Student: And and since was [unknown] taught us so much about camera angles and stuff we've learned that that's how we got Excellence, yeah. I think self managing plays a big role in our future focus and I think as myself I can self-manage quite well and the fact that they've given us, they've given me all this free time, it's not you've got to be in this subject's doing this for the entire for the entire hour and a half.

And then and in the next block, you're in another subject. I can just spread it all out and then work on whatever I need to if I'm falling behind in any of the subjects. So I think that really helps out because my parents are really happy that because of that, I'm doing much better in school. I've got 50% Excellence in the in the project class and I wouldn't even dream about that in my own classes.

And it all comes down to passion I think because I want to do this because it's my passion and everybody loves to do their passion. And then there's comparing it to other classes when you're sitting there and then clicking your pen half listening and it just comes in one ear and it goes out the other. If we all write bits and pieces of the script at the same time, we're not going to get any credits for it because most of the things aren’t group work. So we have to write our own individual pieces.

[Slide says integrated assessment]

Student: One of the modules that I've done where we've combined two assessments into sort of like the same context was a Drama and Art one.

It was actually Drama doing Commedia Dell'Arte, which is an ancient Italian drama art form.

And I was really it was really cool because at that point I had not done any art.

I was pretty confident in Drama, but I was like pretty much lacking in all the art skills.

But I challenged myself and what I loved about the standard was it was a performing standard which was using techniques associated with a theatre period, if I'm not mistaken.

And the Art standard was using art techniques associated with a theatre period.

So the two standards were already pretty similar. But I think the best part about it for me was I was able to create a mask that I actually used for my theatre performance.

So that's, that was like that was pretty awesome.

What was best was we learned the reason why the mask looked like a certain way, what materials they were made from, and we could link it back to how we were performing with the masks.

I got 4 Level 1 credits from Art and 4 Level 2 credits from Drama.

What I liked was the context of it. Like I knew why I had to do the mask. I knew why the eyebrows had to be shaped a certain way. I knew why the colour had to be like this because it linked back to the drama.

And with the drama, even because I had made my own mask, I could even explain a little bit of what I'd done in Art, in my Drama statement of intent so I could, like, talk about I could talk about the themes that I did with the artwork, like the colours and all that stuff.

I'd say the advantages is you don't take 1 subject at face value. Another example I could think of is Music and Drama, which is another class I've done.

What we did was at first we studied what makes music effective, and then we studied what makes drama effective, and we found that the two things, that the things that made them really effective were actually the same thing.

It was the same stuff. It was of creativity. It was how they held an audience's attention. And it's quite amazing to see how these things just link together.

And it's not just music. You have to do this and then take your mind out of that drama. You've got to do this.

It's nice to know that it's actually like really similar.

I find that I'm not too bad at reports, but I do like having a camera in front of me instead and just talking about it. And what I found is if I if we ask for it, usually teachers can adjust stuff and make it so we don't have to write stuff and we just like talk in front of a camera.

[Slide says innovative assessment timing]

Student: From before it was quite like, quite, how do I word it, it was like it kinda was quite fast paced, like you weren’t moving at your own speed and it made it very hard to like keep everything that you've learnt.

Like one day be learning this and then the next day you’d learn something else and it just wasn't, yeah.

Interviewer: So the difference this year is that you can spend longer or...?

Student: The difference is that I can work at my own pace, which is that I can learn at the speed that I need to learn it. And other people can also do that.

So if someone's a faster learner or a slower learner, they can work, they can learn at their own speed. But we get to pick when we do our assessments, which I think is very good, because then it's not like a deadline because we can pick the deadline so we can pick it in a good time.

Where we're not pressured to do it. I think it makes it a bit more nicer.

I find managing it quite easy and like I know for some students it would be a bit harder, but I know that when I don't really know what I'm meant to be doing in the lesson, I go and ask my teacher and she usually jots down what I should have done before the end of the lesson to make it a productive lesson.

I decide the standards by at the beginning. We look at all the standards that we could do 
and we pick out the ones that we think that we'd be best at or what we want to do to lead up to the next one.

I usually choose a context that I understand a bit better, like if

Interviewer interrupts: Can you give me an example?

Student: We've done ones on like a practise test on Kiwis and stuff, which I didn't get to an understanding, but I've moved on. I've done a question for myself about landline phones and the cell rate of them, which makes it just a bit easier to understand.

It was like, what's the difference between male and female kiwi weights and stuff? And like we had to do a plot and whisker chart for it.

Interviewer: And then you moved on to iPhones.

Student: Yeah. And then I do something like that, like the prices of iPhones instead. So like, what's the difference between this this phone and this phone and the price range and stuff and all that?

It just made it more interesting because I was using objects and stuff or I don't know the word for it, yeah context, that I was more interested in.

It made it much easier and made it more that I wanted to do the work like it made me want to do the work more and made me much more interested in it.

Last year, in Year 11, I actually fell very far behind in Maths. I found that it was moving way too quick for me and I couldn't keep up. Failed most of my assessments. I did pass the year and this year I find it much easier.

Like I'm working at my own pace. I can work with people that I work really well with and it just makes it a lot easier.

And I'm not being pressured with deadlines. Every couple of weeks I feel like it is a better way of learning because it's not as pressuring as before.

And I know for some students they can keep up with the pace of school and they can do well in it. But a lot of kids can't.