Spotlight 1: TAP testimonial

Kia ora. I'm Ange from South Westland Area School. I participated in this course last year, and I really enjoyed it because it challenged me to better engage my students and their learning and assessment activities.

One of the best things I did from the course was actually open up my assessments to my kids. So rather than making them submit their assignments in just an essay form, video form, or test, I allowed them to submit work in whatever format they preferred, like a portfolio of evidence-style assessment. This allowed my kids, particularly my hesitant ones, to be comfortable with assessments. The first time around, it was pretty difficult for them. They didn't know how to show knowledge that wasn't written down.

But by the second time I trialed it with the same kids, I got videos from my really non-writers. I'll put it that way. They talked on camera about stuff that they would never have wanted to write about. This was on camera by themselves. This was me doing kind of an interview, video with them. I got, like I said, lots of animations. They really enjoyed that. Again, diagrams. That's not to say they didn't do writing, but they did writing in a way that they were comfortable with rather than just answering written questions.

With some scaffolding, showing them the different ways that they could submit work or demonstrate their understanding of the topic, I got not as much variety from the junior class because they had more practice, but I did get more than just those traditional essays and reports. Again, I got more diagrams. One kid just wrote me an email, which was interesting, but a lot of them went on to use some really cool digital stuff, not just handwritten notes, and I didn't have a single kid fail their internal assessment, which was pretty cool.

The feedback I've had from my kids, even the stuff that I trialed from the course that didn't work, is great. They enjoyed it. They enjoy trying new things. They really enjoyed being able to express themselves in the way that they felt most comfortable while also working on their literacy skills, presentation skills, and all those other things that they need to be a good scientist. So yeah, of course it's great. Challenge yourself, do new things.