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Students were given a formal assessment at the end of the unit of work on Australia's System of Government. This gave a clear indication on what students understood and I provided timely, and general feedback to the class, clarifying things that some misunderstood.
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A completed 'Short Story Analysis' workbook completed by a student.
The formal assessment on short story analysis based off the text 'Pink Bowtie' by Paul Jennings.
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In English, the concept of analysing short stories was the focus set by the school for the term. This is a new and very complex concept for year 6's. Therefore, I created a sequence of lessons that scaffolded their learning, working through each short story convention and practising analysing each using short stories.
Each lesson had a different conventional focus, and I created a workbook with tasks that students would fill out as they went. I spent a lot of time trying to find short stories to use for analysis practice. I wanted to engage students in some way, and choosing appealing short stories was my way of doing this. Students loved the stories I found and they were very engaged in the learning process. For their formal assessment on short story analysis, to show how much they learnt throughout the previous lessons, I found a short story that was entertaining, and wrote questions for students to answer. These questions tested their understanding of each convention and analysing skills. Students were given the short story the week prior to assessment to read through and become familiar with. They were then given two 40 minute sessions to complete the assessment individually. Overall, I was extremely pleased with how much students had learnt and retained. I believe this will greatly help them next year in High School when writing essays on texts. Documents:
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The 5 questions used for the 'oral tests'.
Handout given to students with all required information to answer the 5 required questions outlined at the top of the page.
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I try to use various methods of assessment. One I decided to use was conducting 'oral tests' where students were given 5 questions to research and understand before being tested one-on-one. This gives a good indication of student understanding, as explaining something requires a higher order understanding of a concept, as well as a good memory. It also gave students an easy assessment that didn't require hours of work on presentation.
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For persuasive speaking in English, students conducted debates. Students created their own debate topics and formed teams. I provided a structured program (see my website) to prepare students for the debates.
I used a rubric to assess the debate as it was an effective method to complete as students spoke. I used different coloured highlighters to show how each speaker performed in each judging section. Following the debate, I totalled the scores, declared the winning team, and teams got to view the rubric to see how they went. |
Examples of students' evaluation sheets and feedback.
An example of my feedback for one student.
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For HASS, I decided to assess students on skills other than simply content learning. For this assessment I focused on problem solving, collaboration, and time management skills. This gave me the opportunity to observe students and provide them with specific feedback on areas of strength and make suggestions for improvements in how they work.
During lessons I walked around and made observation notes about how the groups and individuals worked. I then used this to assess the students. On completion of the tasks, students had to complete and evaluation form, reflecting on their own performance, as well as each member of their group. This revealed students' maturity, critical thinking skills, and reflection in hindsight. I then compiled all observations and evaluations to form my personal comment and feedback for each student. I tried to give each student something to strive for next time and improve on in my feedback. I found this a great assessment, that allowed me to see and assess my students in a different way. I feel that students often don't receive enough feedback on these kind of skills, and I aim to continue it more often as they are skills crucial to success in school and life.
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An example of my reflection assessment method 'pass out the door', where students had to answer a question and hand it in on their way to recess.
These gave me a quick overview of students understanding of content and listening skills. I used the results of this activity to form ability groups for the following lesson, evenly distributing those who answered correctly throughout the groups. |
Student diaries were used as a form of communication to parents set up by the regular class teacher. They were used to show parents how their child was doing in class, commenting on both positive and negative outcomes. These had to then be taken home by students and be signed by a parent so we knew it had been seen.
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