Assessment case studies from teachers

[Slide says Earth and Space Science innovative internal assessment]

Earth and Space Science teacher:
So second semester I was paired with an English teacher and we just came up with Armageddon, the next big disaster. So we looked at volcanoes and volcanology in the New Zealand context. So I guess my subjects hit the theme and then Mandy’s area of English ,we use creative writing. So they wrote about Māori mythology based on the region for a creative writing piece.

And then we used the formal Science report as their formal writing piece and between those two, and they got full credits for the Science Report and then they got the 6 credits for their English writing portfolio. I think when I did my end of topic polling and used a Google form to collect some feedback, that was a lot of what they said.

I'll be quite honest, I didn't come for the science Nick, I came because I needed my English credits, but I now have a greater appreciation when I drive from here to Rotorua the features I see are not just lumps in the ground, you know, stuff like that. For a Year 11 student is actually quite honest and insightful. I think we don't experience the world in a silo, so why would we teach our students in a silo?

There's nothing beyond our school gates or our kura that you just do Maths as Maths. When you go to the supermarket theres nutrition involved. Life is very much a blend of all of these experiences, the workforce is certainly a blend of all of these experiences. So if we can start to upskill our learners now as part of their key competencies, if you want to put a label on it or their 21st century skills or we can blend that into our teaching now we're only going to serve them better in the real world then if we stay in our lanes and teach what we’ve taught the way we’ve taught

That's not necessarily how I believe society and the workforce is reflected these days.

[Slide says Integrated innovative assessment]

Maths teacher: The biggest, most obvious difference that we do differently when it comes to assessing Maths is combining with another subject. And by doing that, and depending on which subject it is, we look at trying to produce combined assessments so that we don't have, for example, I've just done a Maths and PE module that PE into Maths, there's an aspect that's being assessed together at the same time.

So there's not a separate PE assessment and not a separate Maths assessment. We've been able to combine that, of course cuts down assessment time for the students and there's a genuine context for the students. They've had to plan a training programme over a period of six weeks. They've had they've tested aspects of physical ability happen to be in rock climbing and then trained for six weeks and retested the same things and put that into statistical investigation.

And what's combined with that, in fact, it was combined with Outdoor Ed and PE assessments of planning a training programme as well as actually assessing their rock climbing. They would achieve more doing it this way, then they would in a traditional way. It is more meaningful to them. They're more engaged in the first place. It definitely engages a lot of students who would not normally be engaged in Maths.

I did a really successful one with food technology and we did number well, we did number, we did measurement and as well as Statistics, but the number and measurement is so much in there to the point where I realise it's almost too much to try to try to take into account all the Maths they’re doing at every stage of the cooking process or the planning process that they had to go through.

I could have stopped if I could have stopped the food technology teaching every 5 minutes and said, by the way, this is an important aspect of of your number skills that you need to know. All this is an important measurement aspect. I mean, it's good, again, that we need to look at it. So I had to plan how I brought out the Maths that they were doing automatically by doing the food technology thing again is a genuine context where the students realise that, well, we really do need to know how to use proportion when changing the recipe and things like that.

I've seen students engage in Maths who have come here with a negative attitude towards Maths and a lot of students do. I always see that for whatever reason there's lots of reasons why that might be and they are able to make connections, they're able to see, I think that the teachers are very enthusiastic about helping them to understand Maths in context in the real world.

And I'm sure that has shown been shown in the engagement of a lot more students, so therefore it's worth it. One of the most important ways that we're moving away from just individual tests is to look at portfolio tasks. Now that's not so difficult. And from for Statistics and for Statistics teachers, for teachers of other areas and Maths number and algebra, for example, they can find it more difficult to have what would normally just be simply a one off test to know where the students sat with their algebra skills and trying to it's trying to have that as a portfolio task, which means the teacher has to be collecting evidence but in an appropriate way

to use as assessment information, if you know what I mean. With as in they need to be observing students and seeing whether they're getting help, whether they're doing a particular task on their own and at different times for different students looking at different paces. So the portfolio task is how we are trying just how to be trying to evolve from testing.

[Slide says Maths innovative internal assessment Wellington High School 2]

Maths teacher: I would not want to go back to standing at the front of the room trying to pretend I'm the expert and that every one has to do what I say.

I learn so much from sitting down and talking to the kids.

Yeah, we get off task every now and then. But But I just have to look around and the the whole tone of the class is just so completely different.

It's a nice, friendly relationship.

I get students coming to school for Maths for the first class of the day. Now, that would never have happened in the past.

We've got students who teachers say they wouldn't have believed could pass anything who are getting Merit and getting Merit and Excellences.

Last year we had Pacifica and Māori students getting Merit and Excellent assessment standards that they wouldn't have come close to before. And it was because we we presume or [unknown] 
and we feel the reason for this is because they actually have got time to think about what they’re doing.

And although it's scary at the start to have to write your own assessment after the first one, they find it a much more useful and a much more meaningful process.

So actually nice to go into the assessment with a smile on your face. But probably one of the most extreme ones we had last year was for coordinate geometry where the student had come up with an intergalactic battle between three warped planets.

And he was moving these planets around the around the space to sort out the the moves and where he thought they’d go and got completely entrenched, obviously.

So it was very, very straight forward for him to get an Excellence for it.

[Slide says Physics innovative internal assessment]

Physics teacher:

I'm a big believer in project based learning. They don't always want to do a project project. Sometimes they just say, I just want to write an essay. And I say, That's boring, but that's what you want. It's up to you. But yeah. So rather than a test I've never assessed an internal as a test. I've never done that.

And certainly I think the fact that their internals means they should never be assessed as a test. I feel quite strongly about that. The evidence can be straight supplied in a variety of ways from from either a project which has some kind of practical outcome backed up by some sort of research document, perhaps. Or perhaps I would film the student as they discuss what it is their project’s about and show off what it is they've done or perhaps there's a written report which goes with a poster or something.

It just depends on what the strengths of the student are. I think by the time we get to Physics at year, 12, 13 the students know about their learning well enough that they know how they would best present their evidence from their learning. And so as part of the discussion, we talk about what it is they're going to do into it, how it is they're going to evidence their work and want to make sure that that's the right way to evidence for them.

For each internal, I've got some sort of task templates and then I take those and then in a conversation with the student, I find out what it is they're interested in, the sorts of things they are interested in investigating. And then together we put together a task which might have more than one standard at once, depending on what it is they would like to do.

And then they can go do that. And that is an individual process for each student so that that doesn't happen all at once. Each student comes to that process at their own time. What I try to do with these projects is make sure that whatever project they're doing, the investigation that they're doing supports, knowledge, for instance.

So if I go back to that project about the radio, for example, sure, that was hitting a couple of internal standards, but it was also supporting a lot of study for the electrical systems external at level three. And so that meant that that student was able to study for that quite, quite easily. You know, she already knew a lot of a lot of things because she came to that knowledge through a project which she decided she wanted to do.As, as a science team.

We've decided that we don't want to have separate reporting methods for Biology, Chemistry and Physics. We want to build on the things that unite those things, unite those layers together rather than separate even further. So what we've done together is we've come up with four different learning objectives based around what we think unites science from investigation, research, communication and evaluation.

That's our main assessment, and that's the assessment we would use in our integrated learning classes. We would so we would use what we think science is as far as our reporting and our assessment, rather than just internals, which only gives a very small snapshot of someone's understanding.