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KICE 학생평가지원포털

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KICE 학생평가지원포털

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KICE 학생평가지원포털

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이용약관 개인정보처리방침 뷰어다운로드 RSS

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Whether new or experienced, every teacher knows the importance of assessments in informing our classroom practices and identifying gaps and next steps. However, given the guided inquiry approach of the PYP, we can often get confused by what to assess and how best to assess it. We have designed this comprehensive guide as your companion for inquiring into assessment in your PYP classroom.

Through this guide and the accompanying resources, we will deep dive into 5 key questions:

1. Part 1. Why do we assess?

2. Part 2. What to assess?

3. Part 3. How to assess?

4. Part 4. What do we mean by assessment capable students?

5. Part 5. What are some ways of reporting on learning?

At different points in this guide, you will find resources that you can start using in your classroom today. Excited? Let's get started!
Please note: We designed this guide to be navigated sequentially. That being said, this is your inquiry so feel free to jump around to the sections you find most relevant to your context.
Part 1- Why do we assess?

Simon Sinek says no matter what you do, " start with why." When the learning community is aligned on the "why" of assessment, trust is built and meaningful action takes place. Teachers, students, parents, and administrators can then work towards a common goal.

Assessment holds different meanings for different stakeholders. It is often an intimidating subject to broach. Assessment impacts much more than just grades, it affects instruction, placement, student retention, and funding. It pushes us to ask hard questions, such as "Are we teaching effectively?", "Are all students catered to?", "Do teachers use assessment to better teaching and learning practices?", "How are we performing as a school?".

Before we dive into the "what" and "how" of assessment, it is important to align on the "why". We will break down the conceptual question "Why does assessment matter across the learning community?"

In this first part, you will -

Understand the importance of assessment for the different stakeholders in our learning community. Read more

Part 2 - What to assess?

Now that we know why we assess, we need to be able to identify what we are going to assess in our classrooms.

Sugata Mitra says, "We live in a world where, when we want to know something, we can learn it in two minutes. Could it be, the devastating question, that we're heading towards a future where knowing is obsolete?" He makes the case that often we assess what children know rather than assessing whether they can think.

As PYP educators and designers of inquiry-based learning, it is often challenging to figure out what to assess. Some big wonderings include "Should we be assessing knowledge or concepts?", "How do we use curricular standards or scope and sequence documents to create success criteria?", "What are strategies we can use to assess meaningfully?"

In the PYP, you are responsible for assessing student knowledge, conceptual understandings, and skills. We will dive into the conceptual question, "How do we decide what to teach and assess?"

In this second part, you will -

Unpack how to assess knowledge, understandings, and skills. Explore more

Grab editable assessment templates you can use in your classroom. Download here

Part 3 - How to assess?

Assessments in the PYP are all about process over product. Assessments are often designed after learning is planned, but they need to take center stage. Assessments need to be weaved in through the course of the unit. Our goal is to be able to tell the story of learning - where it began, how it grew, how thinking changed, and what understandings were brought about.

However, the big question remains "How do we check for student understanding while they're still in the process of learning?" We will get hands-on and look into the conceptual question, "How do we design meaningful and balanced assessment for a unit of inquiry".

In this third part, you will -

Explore the 4 types of assessments. Read more

Discover an assessment cycle and strategies you can use to create meaningful ongoing assessments for your classroom. Click here to watch the video. Explore more

Watch this guided video to unpack the assessment cycle and view real-life examples. Click here

Use our assessment planning template to organize yourself. Download here

Part 4 - Developing assessment capable students

Assessment capable students are simply students who have agency, take ownership, and reflect on their progress.

In educator circles, it is repeatedly said that we're preparing children for an unknown future. We cannot know what challenges and opportunities our students will face in their future. Therefore, our primary goal as PYP educators is to equip students with the skills and capability they need to learn on their own.

When children become assessment capable, they continuously reflect on their learning, set learning goals, and plan next steps to achieve their goals. They self-assess by asking questions such as, "Where am I going?", "Where am I right now?" ,"How can I close the gap?" Nancy Frey, Douglas Fisher, and John Hattie say, "When students know how to learn, they are able to become their own teachers". Once that happens, once children become assessment capable, learning is truly limitless. We will zoom into the conceptual question "What is assessment capability and how do you grow it?"

In this fourth part, you will -

Dive into 3 traits of assessment capable students in this guided video. Watch here

Learn simple but effective strategies for growing assessment capability for all learners. Explore more

Part 5 - Reporting on Learning

We have finally arrived at the last stop of every assessment cycle - reporting on learning. Historically, report cards have a bad reputation. They are seen as stressful for the teachers writing them, overwhelming for the parents who read them, and inaccessible for the students who are at the center of them.

In the PYP, reporting on learning is a celebration of progress with the learning community. When done right, reporting is continuous, growth-focused, and personalized. Reporting on learning takes many forms - report cards, student portfolios, student-led conferences, and more. However, we're going to deep dive into 2 central components - using student portfolios and writing report cards. Both of these give us opportunities to build a shared language around learning and frame the dialogue for moving forward. We will look at the conceptual question "What might reporting look like in a PYP classroom?"

In this fifth and final part, you will -

Explore the roles that student portfolio can play in reporting with this short video and checklist. Watch here

Discuss tips, tricks and best practices for writing report card comments in this blog. Read more

Explore how PYP schools around the world approach their progress reports with this downloadable resource. Explore more

Conclusion

Authentic assessments are a key ingredient in making a true inquiry-based learning environment. Becoming an assessment-capable community of educators, students, and parents takes time and constant effort.

Through this guide, our hope was to allow you to make connections between how learning and assessments are so intricately connected in the PYP and to empower you with actionable resources and strategies that you can take back to your classroom. As you grow your practice as an assessment capable educator, you can look back to this guide and find -
Disclaimer - The ideas and resources presented in this blog have been developed independently from and are not endorsed by the International Baccalaureate (IB). Toddle's resources seek to encourage sharing of perspectives and innovative ideas for classroom teaching and learning. They are not intended to be replacements for official IB guidelines and publications. Views and opinions expressed by authors of these resources are personal and should not be construed as official guidance by the IB. Please seek assistance from your school's IB coordinator and/or refer to IB documents before implementing these ideas and strategies in your classroom.

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Your Guide to Assessments in the PYP: Unpacking the what, why and how of assessments

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Unpack the what, why, how of IB PYP assessments - get templates, guides and strategies that you can use in your PYP classroom. Explore more!

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In this article you will find a framework for co-constructing success criteria with grade 4 students as part of assessment planning.
I strongly believe that assessment is something that should be done 'with students', not 'to students'. And as part of that belief I often feel uncomfortable when teachers sit together behind closed doors and decide what students ought to learn and how best students can show their learning - specifically when it comes to designing success criteria for an assessment tool. How can we expect students to fully engage in learning and demonstration of learning process when they are kept out of the decision-making process about what should be learned in the first place?

Many PYP educators would agree that co-constructed success criteria-criteria developed by teachers and students together in partnership-is an effective practice. But as with many inquiry-based, student-centered approaches to learning and teaching, the question remains: How do you take that idea and put it into practice with a group of students?

This year, I tested one approach for developing co-constructed success criteria with a group of grade 4 PYP students. I adapted a growing definition thinking routine to help structure the process of getting 23 students and 1 teacher to agree on what ought to be known and understood by the end of a unit of inquiry.

First, I was transparent with the students about why we were going to do the activity and how important I believe it is for them to have an equal say in what ought to be learned by the end of the unit.

I shared the central idea Decisions about energy can lead to a sustainable future for the unit under the transdisciplinary theme How we organize ourselves that the grade 4 team of teachers had designed and asked the students to think about what they think they should know in order to be able to fully understand the central idea by the end of the unit. Each student individually created their own list.

Then, students took their individual list and joined with another student and worked together to synthesize their lists into a new list that represents both of their thinking.

Next, two sets of partners would combine and repeat the process. Each set of partners would read their list and the newly formed group of four would create a new list that represented everyone's thinking. One group of four would then join with another group of four and that group of eight would create a new list that synthesized everyone's ideas. This pattern would continue until about half the class is working on one list and the other half of the class working on another list.

At this point I collected the two final lists so that I could add any criteria that I felt was missing based on the central idea and conceptual understandings that underpinned the unit. I was amazed to see that the final list the students came up with was almost exactly what we as teachers would have come up with behind closed doors. The closer I looked at the list, the more I realized that many, if not all, of the PYP key conceptual lenses were represented as ways to understand and inquire our central concept of energy.

From here I typed out the list onto our rubric template and only added one criteria for success that I felt was missing.

This rubric became the rubric we used for all diagnostic, self, peer and teacher assessments.

Using the growing definition routine turned out to be a great structure for allowing 23 students and 1 teacher to all have their voices and perspectives heard and honoured in the process of deciding what ought to be known and understood by the end of a unit of inquiry.

Doing this part of assessment planning with students had many positive implications on student learning and also on our class sense of community. Students had a clearer picture of where they needed to be by the end of the unit. The rubric became a tool that students understood and constantly referred to throughout the learning process and helped our class feel more like a community of learners. We were truly partners in the co-construction process, where our voices were equally valued and included in the decisions that were made. Overall, it felt like a fair and inclusive way to respect and support students' involvement in their own learning.

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Taryn BondClegg blogs at Making Good Humans which is her small attempt to continue to make sense of the PYP, of inquiry, and of how to make a real difference in the world through education. Taryn has always felt a calling to change the world - to somehow leave it in a better state than we found it. She saw teaching as a way to make this happen. You can follow her on Twitter

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In this article you will find a framework for co-constructing success criteria with grade 4 students as part of assessment planning. I strongly believe that assessment is something that should be done 'with students', not 'to students'.

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Well-designed, student-led assessments can enhance self-efficacy and promote self-regulated learning. IB World Magazine talks to our Learning in Assessment Manager, Wendy Choi about best practice.

By Wendy Choi - Learning in Assessment Manager, IB

How do you show evidence of student learning throughout the year? It's probably through a combination of tests, written work, group work, artwork and oral reports. But to encourage student agency and better engagement, many IB teachers are turning to student-led assessments. Here, Wendy Choi, learning in assessment manager at the IB, discusses how this can be done successfully.

Wendy's role is to keep up with the latest research and global best practices in assessment for formative purposes and support and celebrate these effective practices in the IB Community.

"The majority of IB teachers would have tried some form of student-led formative assessments in their classes", she says. "Then of course this may vary depending on the part of the world they are in or the school culture. In some schools, student-led assessments are actually the more common form of classroom assessment".

Wendy continues: "In IB classrooms, teachers demonstrate a lot of agency in designing, implementing and giving feedback in assessments for formative purposes, which includes giving students choices in assessment whenever it's helpful."

What does student choice involve?

The primary purpose of formative assessments is to help teachers and students make inferences of their learning, so as to provide feedback that moves learning and teaching forward.

"Providing more choices in student assessment helps promote student agency and self-efficacy."

One form of student-led assessment is student-generated questions or assessments, where students take ownership of their learning by designing the assessment task or questions themselves. They then decide how to evaluate these tasks and co-construct the criteria and provide feedback to their classmates through peer assessments.

IB teachers can also provide students with the choice of designing open-ended assessment tasks that allow students to express their skills and knowledge in multiple ways. "For example, the use of a process portfolio or exhibition encourages students to express what they have learned in a way that they feel could best demonstrate their understanding", says Wendy.

"For some students this may be expressing their thoughts in a written and numerical way, while for others they may prefer to show their conceptual understanding in a more visual and artistic way".

Teachers can try to personalize assessments by tapping into students' strengths and interests. "For example, a Diploma Programme (DP) theory of knowledge (TOK) teacher asked their students to create a digital formative assessment task by making and sharing either a:

The tasks were assessing the same key construct, that is the students' understanding of the TOK ways of knowing and areas of knowledge, and their connection to real-life examples".

Being developmentally appropriate

Student choice in assessment is suitable for all age groups, as long as the tasks are developmentally appropriate. For example, the Primary Years Programme (PYP) exhibition, Middle Years Programme (MYP) personal project, Career-related Programme (CP) reflective project or student-led assessments in DP classrooms. Wendy says, "we can see that students in different age groups are capable of making choices in assessment and choosing a mode of expression that aligns with their strengths and interests and that could help them best display what they have learned".

Benefits and challenges

Providing more choices in student assessment helps promote student agency and self-efficacy as students take ownership of their learning, according to Wendy. "It can also reduce assessment biases, as we ensure that we are assessing the key concepts and skills that we want to assess and not secondary skills such as students' ability to express and organize their thoughts in essay writing". This is especially important in a classroom of diverse learners who may not be responding in their first language or have different prior experience in critical reading and writing.

"Students need guidance and training on how to engage in peer and self-assessments."

It can support the development of conceptual understanding in students as they are encouraged to express their knowledge and skills in multi-modal ways, research has shown.

Moreover, the use of student-led assessments and engaging students in peer assessments can also help them internalize success criteria and enhance their evaluative judgement, according to a recent study published in the European Journal of Psychology of Education. "In other words, students will be better prepared to understand 'what is good' and to reflect on the quality of their work and that of their peers", Wendy explains.

However, Wendy reminds us that it is important to make sure when providing students with more choices, the assessments are somewhat comparable.

Students should have equal opportunities to focus on their strengths but also areas that need further improvement, so they continue to have a diverse and holistic assessment experience.

One way to ensure that these methods are successful is to give students practice in designing student-generated questions or student-led assessments. Students also need guidance and training in how to engage in peer and self-assessments and give helpful feedback to one another.

"In order to ensure a certain level of comparability even when student choice is built into the tasks or questions, it is helpful for IB teachers to make explicit the primary and secondary skills required in a task", says Wendy. "Then, it becomes much easier for them to allow different forms of assessment and multi-modal responses as long as the questions or tasks assess the same key construct (primary skills) and are measured in the same way".

Having a set of clear and consistent assessment criteria as shown in this IB World Magazine article also supports teachers and learners to provide feedback according to the same standards.

Involving the school community

Many IB teachers are engaging parents and guardians in conversations on what makes good assessment, sharing with them research and evidence from their classrooms of how student agency in assessment supports learning.

Some parents encourage the idea of more student agency in assessment, while others may be used to more traditional ways of teacher-led assessments and would need more help in understanding these different approaches to assessment.

"We have seen many parents and the wider education communities embracing these changes and showing deep understanding of the research, such as understanding that good assessments for formative purposes are not necessarily generated or marked by teachers, and that the most effective feedback is sometimes 'comments without a grade'", says Wendy.

There is definitely a place for student-led assessment in education when implemented well. Wendy concludes that the IB's vision is that students, "will benefit from a holistic assessment experience throughout their IB education, and that their sense of self-efficacy and agency are enhanced in the process".

Wendy is a Learning in Assessment Manager at the IB. Her role focuses on research and policy support on the principles and practices of formative assessment. She is a professionally trained education psychologist and liberal studies teacher and has served in a number of schools, non-profits, government and international organizations. Her professional interests are in the areas of assessment for learning, education research and interventions, student wellbeing and learning diversity. You can connect with her on LinkedIn here

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Well-designed, student-led assessments can enhance self-efficacy and promote self-regulated learning. IB World Magazine talks to our Learning in Assessment Manager, Wendy Choi about best practice. By Wendy Choi - Learning in Assessment Manager, IB How do you show evidence of student learning throughout the year?

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Conducting self-assessment using the ATL skills

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Conducting self-assessment using the ATL skills

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First, I explained the intention of this experience, the reason why self-assessment is vital when reflecting on your own learning and the importance of being honest in the development of the process. Then, my students implemented this strategy in their work and some of them decided to use the same lotus flower and others created another image to represent their ATL skills. To select the icons in each petal, the teacher should ask students to reflect on the following queries:

Which ATL skills have you enhanced throughout the unit of inquiry?

Which skills have you struggled with and why?

Which skill are you going to improve for the next unit of inquiry?

How can you improve these skills?

Finally, I added five concrete action points to work on for the next unit of inquiry with the entire class. My students showed a lot of enthusiasm when asked to illustrate their skills and you can have a look at an example down below:

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Conducting self-assessment using the ATL skills

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First, I explained the intention of this experience, the reason why self-assessment is vital when reflecting on your own learning and the importance of being honest in the development of the process. Then, my students implemented this strategy in their work and some of them decided to use the same lotus flower and others created another image to represent their ATL skills.

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Fun formative assessment: 12 easy, no-tech ideas you can use tomorrow

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Formative assessment means providing students with opportunities to show you what they are learning while you are teaching it. These assessments inform

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Evidencing Learning IB Workshop(2022. 9.)

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Evidencing Learning IB Workshop(2022. 9.)

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How we assess in the PYP classroom can feel daunting at first! This section is broken into several parts that will support you along your journey of becoming an assessment capable practitioner.
In this section we will:

Explain the 4 types of assessment

Address the summative-assessment elephant in the classroom

Breakdown what assessment looks like in the classroom with actionable strategies

If we had to summarize the assessment in the PYP in one phrase, it would be process over product.

Rather than focus on what students make or do at the end, how can we shift our focus towards evidencing the learning journey? Think of assessment like storytelling. How will you show a clear picture of where students began, what shifted or grew their thinking, and the challenges and successes they faced along the way?

By thinking of assessment in this way, it truly becomes a shared reflective process for moving the learning forward.

The 4 types of assessment

Principles to Practice outlines 4 types of assessment and visually shows us where we should spend the majority of our time as assessors. We have moved away from the terms formative and summative assessments and towards the four types of assessment outlined in the model below.

Assessments should all be integrated and flow together rather than being thought of as separate elements, as shown in the image below.

Click on each type of assessment to read more about it!

This is a common misconception from the PYP documentation.

You absolutely CAN still do summative assessments. Having students design, create, perform, and share their learning is a joyous part of being an IB teacher.

However, these assessments should not drive the bus and should be relevant to the learning. They should be one piece of the assessment puzzle and be seen more as one opportunity (among many) to document the learning!

That being said, you don't HAVE TO. It is perfectly acceptable to have students curate a collection of their work to showcase learning. Again, we are focused on process over product.

What does assessment look like in your classroom?

Before a unit begins
We should go through a process of selecting and unpacking the standards we wish to address in the unit. These should be expressed clearly as what students will know, understand, and be able to do.
Look back at Part-2: What do We Assess for more clarity surrounding this process.
You will go through this cycle many times through the course of the unit. To start, identify the knowledge, skill, or understanding you will be focusing on.

Measure current understandings and needs: Think of this like a pre-assessment. You are finding out about students' prior knowledge- Where are students currently at and how does that connect to the goals you have set for the unit?

Set Individual Goals: Next, engage in a process of goal setting. Based on your data, these may be class-wide goals or differentiated based on the needs arising in your class. In this stage you can think about both remediation and extension. Where are students going?

Monitor and Document: Throughout the unit, collect evidence of challenges and growth connected to goals. What shifted thinking or proved to be difficult? How can you provide a photo album of evidence that shows the learning journey? How are we getting there?

At the end/when appropriate

Reporting: When appropriate, how will you share the learning journey with the learning community? This is a great time to think about all stakeholders. How might families and the greater school community come together to engage with the learning process?

Check out this video for a guided look at this cycle:

What does assessment look like in your classroom?

For more ideas about assessments and templates you can use in your classroom, look back at the what we assess blog. Think about how you will assess the new knowledge, understandings, and skills you will develop throughout the unit. Might you use the same assessment multiple times throughout the unit?

Check out this great video from Tokyo International School and use the provided guiding questions to explore how this team is modeling a cycle of assessment:

Conclusion

Assessment is all about balance. As teachers, we partner with students to document the learning journey and adjust the teaching and learning to address needs as they arise. Knowing the different types of assessment and when to use them takes you one step further on your journey as a PYP assessment practitioner.

So far we have taken a deep dive into why, what, and how we assess. In the next section, join us as we explore the role of students in an assessment capable classroom!

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How to Assess in the IB PYP: Process Over Product

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Unpack assessment in the IB PYP and learn to emphasize on process over product. Breakdown what assessment looks like in the classroom with actionable strategies.

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As guided inquiry educators, we're constantly walking the tightrope of what to focus on and what to assess. As we plan for a unit of inquiry, we should have clarity around what we want our students to be able to do. We should be able to define the success criteria for the unit using concrete action verbs such as: define, argue, solve, and create. Our goal, when we're deciding what to assess, is to be able to answer: What will students know, understand, and be able to do as a result of engaging in the learning?

Knowledge: Identifying the new knowledge for a unit can often be challenging or feel counterintuitive to inquiry. However, this is a crucial step in planning! When we think about knowledge, we are determining the facts, information, case studies, or theories that will best support students in developing their understanding in a unit.

Understandings: Understandings are deeply personal and are earned by students. They are how students make sense of new information compared to their past experiences. They are the lasting ideas and beliefs that students have as a result of the learning.

Skills and Dispositions: The development of Approaches to Learning and the attributes of the IB Learner Profile support students as lifelong learners. By developing these skills, students learn how to learn and gain the ability to learn about things independently in the future.

Identifying your success criteria (knowledge, understandings, and skills) can feel tricky at first. Let's start by looking at a real life example:

When designing your success criteria for a unit, a great starting point is to unpack your curriculum standards. These might come from a local or national curriculum or from the IB Scope and Sequence documents. If you have selected a standard for a unit, take the time to unpack it and ask yourself, "What knowledge, concepts, and skills are embedded?"

Below, you can see an example of unpacking Kindergarten Next Generation Science Standards. By breaking down the standards, it becomes easier to assess and teach the concrete knowledge, skills, and understandings.

Assessing Knowledge, Understandings, and Skills

Once you have identified your success criteria, you can begin to think about the types of evidence you might collect. Here are some assessment strategies you can use to assess knowledge, concepts, and skills. While this is not a comprehensive list, it provides a starting point for seeing the different types of assessments you might include throughout a unit to collect balanced evidence. In a later section, we will explore planning for assessment in more depth.

1. Knowledge

Knowledge is the building block for our units. The goal of assessing mastery of knowledge is often to identify misconceptions that might get in the way of forming deeper conceptual understandings later in a unit. Often, knowledge-based assessments tend to be more binary, that is, students either demonstrate mastery or not.

Here are three strategies you can use to assess knowledge in your classroom.

2. Understanding

It is often said that students have to "earn" understandings. Earning these conceptual understandings requires students to reflect, make meaning of, and organize the information they have previously learned so they can apply it in new situations throughout their lives. Whereas knowledge tends to be more binary (right or wrong), understandings often fall on a continuum of development as students link prior knowledge to new and deepening understandings.

Here are three ways to assess conceptual understanding in your classroom.

3. Skills

Acquiring skills empowers students to learn anything. Skills are often the most tangible piece of our assessment: What can students do as a result of the learning? The ATL sub skills provide an amazing starting point for identifying what the acquisition of skills might look like in your classroom. Our ultimate goal is for students to transfer skills learned in the classroom into their lives. As teachers, we should explicitly teach and model the language and processes learners need to use to be successful both - in class and in life.

Here are three ways to assess ATL skills in your classroom:

Conclusion

With the right knowledge, understandings, and skills, you can learn anything! By unpacking your success criteria, you can explicitly identify what to assess and begin the journey of designing for authentic assessments. Below is a video that walks you through the 3 steps you need to take to unpack your curriculum and create powerful success criteria for your classroom:

In the next section, we will take a deeper dive into how we assess in our classrooms. Continue reading!

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Create authentic assessments to evaluate student knowledge, understandings, and skills as you plan a unit of inquiry in your IB PYP classroom.

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주도적 평가 능력을 갖춘 학습자를 지원하기 위한 질문들(번역)

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주도적 평가 능력을 갖춘 학습자를 지원하기 위한 질문들(번역)

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주도적 평가 능력을 갖춘 학습자를 지원하기 위한 질문들(번역)

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루브릭의 종류와 장단점

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루브릭의 종류와 장단점

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Elementary Report Card Handbook - Simsbury download / elementary-report-card-handbook-simsbury.pdf / PDF4PRO

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Download elementary-report-card-handbook-simsbury.pdf - The Elementary Report Card Handbook–A Guide to Reporting Student Progress outlines the essential elements of reporting progress to parents/ ... COMMENTS Written comments on the report card provide an anecdotal supplement of the grades reflected…

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Read IBAEM PYP Reporting Booklet by ManageBac on Issuu and browse thousands of other publications on our platform. Start here!

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This is a recap of the Plenary presentation recently given at the SAIBSA PYP Job-Alike Conference hosted by NEEV Academy through virtual Conference. (March 2021)

Rethinking Assessment

When considering how we as educators may begin to “Rethink Assessment” especially at this time, I think, we should first pause to consider how COVID-19 has affected our learning communities worldwide. COVID19 has been a game changer for all of us as it has presented a myriad of both challenges and opportunities to not just the world of education, but for business, for hospitality and travel and for those in the creative and technology industries.

2020 and now 2021 has been a year for learning, unlearning and relearning for all of our community….. leadership, teachers, learners and parents.

It has been a time where we have had to rethink the roles in education as home based learning and social distancing have meant that our families and parents have taken on some of the teachers’ role, and we as educators have had to support not just our learners but also our parents as we have had to take on role of techsperts, movie makers, performer, and counselors.

But these different times have brought us together and made us stronger learning communities full of care and compassion – developing an empathy and appreciation for each other, our situation, our individual and collective challenges, have also highlighted the strengths we each bring , leading to growing partnerships in learning – as true learning communities.

COVID-19 has been a time of re-evaluating, re-creating, and re-thinking our pedagogical practice and approach to teaching and learning and illuminated the necessity for this change as our learners have become increasingly more self-directed in their learning and with that more self-aware of themselves as learners.

So, how can we use all we have learned through COVID-19 and apply this to our assessment practice? First, let’s explore what our shared understanding is of ‘Assessment’?

Beginning with a pre-assesment using Menti Meter to inquire into our shared understanding

What are the first TWO words you think of when we say “ASSESSMENT” ?

From Menti Meter…

The root definition of Assessment – is To Sit Beside…….

As in: To engage, to involve, to share, to trust

This conjures up visions of team learning, of collaboration, and partnership, working together to discuss, reflect,and build community and a culture of coaching and support.

The definition Implies a presence of dialogue, discourse, one person trying to understand the other’s perspective before giving value judgements…..
(Breakamp & Ory 1994)

It aligns so closely with our values as IB PYP Schools – Putting our learners first….and our shared beliefs and our ‘image of the child’ as competent, capable young humans and able and through agency – have voice, choice and ownership of their learning ….

So, if we as PYP Schools believe this about our learners then, how are our current practices supporting these values?

And the big question …. Are they?

I believe that we have somehow, as educators, got lost – and instead of something we do with our learners, as in “Sit beside” we somehow have gone down the pathway to viewing assessment as something we do TO our Learners, something we as adults control and plan assessment in isolation from our learners.

I wonder if we have maybe got too caught up in the cycle of planning, teaching,and assessing and that possibly we have forgotten to pause, reflect and consider our learners and ‘learning’ rather than teaching.

Have we caught up in the ‘noise’ of edutalk and the cycle of doing and been blinded a little by the flood of Edu myths and edu sales that we have in fact lost our way and rather than ‘rethink’ we maybe just need to actually take time to pause, to consider and to revisit the original purpose and thoughts on assessment?

So, as we pause and consider WHY we assess?

What is the purpose of Assessment?

Using Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle and referring to the IB Documents:

The purpose of Assessment:

is to inform learning and teaching.

involves the gathering and analysis of information about learner learning to inform teaching practice. (Please note this is about  the learner’s LEARNING and not about the learner as an individual- which is an important clarification to make)

supports educators as we track progress and plan next steps

supports educators in reporting

And most importantly, supports our learners and informs students of their progress.

Assessment should identify what learners know, understand and can do at different stages throughout the learning process.

If our learning communities do not work together to ensure we have a shared understanding of Assessment and that these values are reflected in our practice, we can actually be doing harm to our learners – having an impact on their motivation to learn, their passion for learning and their ideal of school…. To be honest…

This quote from Stiggins and the potential for doing harm to those we are entrusted to care for and support is very actually quite scary

Somewhere along the way we may have blurred the lines between what is Assessment and what is EVALUATION.

ASSESSMENT | EVALUATION

INCREASES
Quality of Learning and Teaching

JUDGES
Quality of Learning and Teaching

Benefits the LEARNER | Benefits External Stakeholders and Decision Makers
Monitors Learning | Assigns grades
Leads to improvement | Analyses success in a finite manner
Provides Accountability | Forms decisions
Ongoing | Provides Closure
Positive | Is at one moment in time
Individualised | Judgemental
Valuable | Applied against standards
Provides Feedback | Shows Short falls and works on a deficit model.

Think back to our own practice  and reflect… Are we sitting beside our learners?

Are we taking time to understand our learners, and their perspectives? Have we got a little lost ourselves along the way? Have we become a society obsessed with measuring? With ranking? With metrics?? With EVALUATING?

At the moment we seem to be obsessed with assessing everything…

We actually have so much data – we don’t quite know what to do with it. There’s Too much ‘noise’ and we need to identify the ‘signals’ – what is important to ‘know’?

Howard Gardner said that the greatest enemy to UNDERSTANDING is coverage” – I believe we’ve got too focused on ‘hitting’ all the standards that we’ve lost our way a little…..

Home based / Remote learning created an understandable scramble for “keeping learners busy” and has revealed cracks in our assessment policies and practices and we found ourselves in danger of slipping back into what is easy to assess rather than what we need to assess.

When there are too many quizzes and tests, exams and summatives – learners come to perceive assessments as something that others – be it teachers, parents, test makers and administrators – people outside themselves – do to them.

When we as the educators sit in the driver’s seat our learners feel insecure and stop trusting themselves and trusting their own judgment about the quality of their work and start believing that the opinions of  others carry more influence and power then their own

Those same questions are applicable to a discussion of assessment choices.

This goes back to our view on our role as educators – our role in learning and teaching.

So where is our responsibility as educators?

How can we ensure, as learning communities  that our assessment practices are reflecting our beliefs and values and at the same time are effective and provide valuable information to understand what constitutes learning. How we can support learning, and  ensure it is meaningful to all members of the learning community, and honours our learners and THEIR growth and THEIR learning?

The PYP approach to assessment gives the learners a vital role in the assessment process and engages the teachers in considering assessment as fit for purpose.

Lets’ review our IB PYP documents:

In Learning & Teaching (Page 67) we read:

“As IB PYP Schools our goal is to thoughtfully and effectively support learners as they successfully acquire knowledge, develop skills and build conceptual understanding and this  requires that both teachers and learners develop and demonstrate assessment capability.“

In The Learner – (Pg 2) we are reminded:

“When learners have agency, the role of the teacher and learner changes; the relationship between a teacher and a learner is viewed as a partnership.

Working within this partnership, learners become more self-aware of themselves as learners, are actively engaged in their learning and have ownership of their learning goals whilst being encouraged to take initiative, ask questions and monitor and adjust their learning as needed.

It is the learners that take responsibility for their learning and collaborate with teachers and other learners to plan, present and assess learning needs.”

So – as educators, If we truly honour agency we need to reconsider our role as educators and shift our practice to ensure we truly are ‘Sitting beside’ our learners in a partnership.

BUT HOW?  How can we work together to make this SHIFT, not just in our personal classroom practices but also in our school wide understanding and approach to assessment that honours our capable and competent learners?

Continuum of Assessment (Harlen, Johnson 2014)

The Assessment Continuum reflects the beliefs of the IB PYP in that when we have effective PYP assessment practice we can holistically integrate assessment for, of and as learning (Harlen, Johnson 2014) to support effective learning and teaching.

However, again I think that we may have lost our way and need to renavigate and evaluate where we are spending most of our time and energy and who is involved in this continuum and when.

When we look at some of our current practices, our continuum looks more like this,

when research – especially that with the learner as being a partner in learning –  should look more like this….

In 2012, Clark stated that “All members of the learning community develop assessment capability (Absolum et al. 2009) to make the “tacit knowledge that is ‘hidden’ within the learner transparent, explicit and available” (Clark 2012).

This quote takes us back to the traditional sense of teaching where the adult was at the front of the room – the expert, the fountain of all knowledge and there was so much “Secret Teacher Business” – Again we must continue to shift our practice from top down, to one to a partnership in the learning process.

Let us pause to define – Assessment Capable –

When we, as members of our learning community are ‘Assessment capable”, we:

are aware of, and understand, why we are assessing and what we are assessing.

have a shared understanding of what constitutes quality learning and the criteria for success.

have a shared understanding of how to assess and what data is being collected, recorded, analysed and shared.

All members of of the learning community are assessment capable when the assessment process is collaborative and inclusive of all members of the learning community. (Hipkins 2009; Booth, Hill, Dixon 2014)

So how can we support our teachers in their journey to becoming Assessment Capable Teachers?

Learning & Teaching, Fig. AS02, Page 71

Our teachers are viewed as Assessment Capable when

they have a positive mindset – When we believe in our learners and are open to developing partnerships and relationships with our learners

they take time to monitor their learners’ knowledge, skills and understanding and get to know their learners and what they know and can do.

they use assessment practices to reflect and self-assess their teaching practice as educators and adapt  as needed to support the learning and learners.

This means a lot of “letting go” especially in planning as we need, as educators, to be adaptable and flexible, responding to the needs of the learners as evidenced in our assessment data.

Assessment Capable practitioners:

take time to co construct with our learners what ‘success’ might look like

provide multiple opportunities for learners to apply their learning and demonstrate their Understanding, Knowledge and skills.

Now, let’s pause here to talk cricket. We are, afterall, the majority of us, in India.

And what a great home series India is having under the captaincy of Virat Kohli, and with stars like Ravichandran Ashwin .

As I was watching the cricket, I watched how Kohli, as the captain, responded to what was happening on the pitch throughout the match and I was reminded of our role as educators and assessment.

When fielding, the captain and his team go out with a game plan in mind, but as captain, Kohli’s role is to continually monitor the game, assessing his player performance, analysing the batsmen – considering which type of bowler is going to be most effective against the batsman, and then adjusting where he needs to direct his fielders.

As captain, he is continually consulting with his bowlers, adapting and adjusting to the conditions, to the wicket and to the opposition. It is a skill of ‘juggling’ many factors, many players and many options all towards a shared goal of minimising the success of the opposition batsmen.

Kohli, his bowlers and his team have a shared understanding of the game, their chosen strategies and have a shared language in which they continually monitor, document and measure their success and thus make informed decisions together that contribute to the success of their game.

We too, as educators need to be ‘Kohli” continually assessing in partnership with our learners and adapting our plan towards a shared goal. We need to be continually monitoring the learning and using the data to adapt and adjust our teaching practice as best suits the learners and their learning.

This graphic below is from Page 76 of Learning and Teaching and represents the four dimensions of Assessment.

That is

Monitoring,

Documenting,

Recording,

Reporting

The four diimensions of Assessment (Learning and Teaching)

Although the four dimensions of assessment are not weighted the same; each dimension has its own value. The PYP chooses to put emphasis on MONITORING and DOCUMENTING learning as these dimensions are critical in providing actionable feedback for the learner.

Monitoring learning

Monitoring employs a plethora of techniques that are centered around the learner and guide the teacher in planning next steps;

It aims to check the progress of learning against personal learning goals and success criteria. It is continuous and occurs daily through a variety of strategies be it through observations of planned activities that  provide a wealth of information produced in a more relaxed, informal environment.

Through monitoring, It is entirely possible for a teacher to assess a child’s understanding even during a pair or group task, without the child being aware of it and can provide the teacher with an opportunity to assess a child’s social development by the way that they are able, or unable, to work collaboratively as part of a team.

We can monitor through conversations and conferences with teachers, learners and parents – providing our learners with opportunities to understand more about themselves as learners.

Questioning is a skill that supports the monitoring of learning – as we ask questions to gauge understanding or to guide to a more detailed response. Questions allow our learners to clarify their thinking and can stimulate a response or further discussion from a peer.

Monitoring learning and the reflections that follow – involves both the learners and the teachers using the data to then co construct feedback to feed forward for next steps in learning.

As we can see from the graphic above, THIS is where we should be spending most of our time and energy – monitoring learning.

Documenting learning

Documenting learning is the compilation of the evidence of learning, it can be physical or digital and is shared with others to make learning visible and apparent.

It reveals insights into learning and provides opportunities to reconnect with learning goals and success criteria. Both our young learners and our teachers are involved in the documentation of learning along with reflections to support the evidence of learning.

As well as the evidence piece itself, the learner may include the documentation tools that may include checklists, rubrics, or anecdotal records.

Documentation of learning is the second dimension where we should be spending time and energy.

Through both monitoring and documenting learning we can collect evidence of understanding and ‘check in’ with the learner .

I’ve included here some of the ‘check ins’ our ISHCMC teachers, under the guidance of our Pedagogical Coach, @fi_Hurtado have used to check understanding of the concepts throughout the unit of inquiry.

Measuring learning

Measuring learning is to capture what a learner has learned at a particular “point in time”.

This is what we seem to LOVE to do – as a society,  we love to measure, to mark, to grade. We love to compare – and our society full of social media likes and followers and streaks.

But we have to remember that not all learning can be, or needs to be, measured.

Measurement tools can be teacher, school or commercially designed – and provide multiple data points to evaluate learner progress.

Examples could be running records, maths interviews, independent writing samples and associated tools or MAP and ACER assessments.

When we measure learning our aim is to analyse the data to support evidence-based decision-making – this could be decisions for individual learners, grade levels and across the school to identify patterns and trends in learner learning.

While these results can useful to the teacher for planning and writing reports or as starting point for their next teacher, they are often of limited value to the learner themselves.

We no longer have this term ‘ Summative’ within our PYP vocabulary, on our planners or as part of our planning process. We may have a project or inquiry towards the end of the unit that provides our learners with the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding or transfer of the concepts, but we have moved away from this paradigm of teach, teach, learn, assess.

Although measurement can be completely teacher driven as in ‘pen and paper tests’ and ‘running records’ there are many opportunities that we could, with a shift in mindset, also be co-constructed with the learner and teh process itself used as part of the assessment.

Reporting learning

Our fourth dimension and the smallest dimension is Reporting on learning which serves to inform the learning community.

Reporting provides opportunities to describe the progress and achievement of the learners’ learning and identifies areas for growth. Also important to remember here that “REPORTING LEARNING” is not just the written report and that reporting learning includes conferencing, sharing of portfolios, presentations such as our PYPx and also assemblies and learning journeys.

So, as we Rethink Assessment as educators and learning communities this graphic is a great reference to use when considering current practices.

As a school, at ISHCMC, under the guidance of @fi_hurtado,we embarked on a self-audit of our current classroom practices. We began the audit with a brainstorm of all the ways we assessed learners and learning within the classroom. As a brainstorm – all ideas and reflections were encouraged.

Our next steps were to sort this data – where would this practice sit within the matrix ? Would it be part of Monitoring, Documenting, Measuring or Reporting?

Once the data was sorted, we then worked out our ratios and proportions. If the whole was 16 (4 x 4) then what would be the proportion of each dimension?

As teaching teams, we then created visual models to represent our practice – where were we spending the most time and energy?

As a school – this self-audit highlighted to us two things:

1. That we were spending lots of time and energy on Measuring learning

2. That we had so many different ways of assessing – there was more quantity rather than quality – we were ‘drowning in data’ but not taking time to analyse and use that data to inform our teaching and learning.

Through our reflection process we also discovered that we did not, as educators or as a school, value Monitoring learning enough. As educators – especially our EY practitioners we are continuously monitoring our learners and learning and adapting and adjusting our practice in response to monitoring – but we were not as a learning community, valuing this data.

So for us as a school – this audit supported us to rethink our assessment practices and also our understanding of assessment.

Shifting our mindset to view our learners as partners in learning, partners in planning and partners in assessment, how can we support the development of Assessment capable Learners?

Trevor Mackenzie asks similar questions ….

By taking an active role in their own assessment, learners analyse how they think and learn. They develop skills to move from being self-assessors to self-monitors, with the aim of becoming self-adjusters.

As IB PYP Schools, our framework is conceptual, and our scope & sequence documents are organised over phases – designed with the learner in mind to support the individual and their learning – and not the curriculum.  Learner first always………

There are no year level expectations in a series of achievement standards. No one is at, on, above or below expectations. Every learner is simply at a level of development defined by what learning is developmentally appropriate.
Griffin 2009

When considering our practice, and our beliefs in agency and our learners as capable and competent – how can we ensure we are developing the independence of learning, of reflection, of self- assessment and that meta-cognition skill of being able to self-adjust? What scaffolds and support can we provide our learners with as they move along the continuum with the goal being to put the control back into the hands of the learner leading to independence and competence?

If we as educatorrs can work along assessment continuums we will be able to support our learners as they develop confidence in becoming assessment capable learners who can confidently state “I Can…..:” , provide evidence to support their learning and identify next steps in their learning.

Learners take the initiative, with or without the assistance of others, in diagnosing their learning needs, formulating learning goals, identifying resources for learning, choosing and implementing appropriate learning strategies, and evaluating learning outcomes.
Malcolm knowles, 1972

This quote is from 1972, over 49 years ago – why has it taken us as educators and as schools so long to adjust and find our way back?

We at ISHCMC have been using the Gradual Increase of Indepence for about 5 years now , where our learners are able to self-assess and provide evidence for their self- assessment and are able to place themselves long the continuum and discuss WHY they have placed themselves there.

Educators at Nexus Singapore have been working with their learner to provide opportunities for self-reflection and assessment and have their “Agent Awesome”. These criteria co-constructed by learners and teachers – leading to a shared understanding of expectations and quality. (Thank you to Aaron Dustow for the share.)

We as educators, in partnership with our learners need to be designing opportunities for co-constructed goal setting, and providing learners with opportunities to identify their learning needs and developing not only goals – but also who, what and how they will need to support them in reaching those learning goals.

We need to also consider our assessment tools and consider that, Instead of rubrics – which can be text heavy, difficult to navigate and subjective – and possible moving towards Single point rubrics where the expectation can be co constructed and agreed on and as learners self assess, identify where they are in their learning and what they need to do to take next steps.

So action? What do we need to rethink? None of this matters if only one of two of our educators begin this journey – to benefit for our learners we need to ensure we are on a collective journey –  we need to develop – as learning communities – a CULTURE OF ASSESSMENT  and do as Sunflowers do…and move forward with a shared understanding and the same beliefs.

A school-wide assessment culture acknowledges the role assessment plays in informing the learner, learning and teaching, and the learning community about achievement, progress and in supporting decision-making.

A shared understanding across your learning community that is clearly communicated  as to your the purposes of assessment and reinforcement of the value of assessment in the monitoring, documenting, measuring and reporting of learning, is important in building a shared assessment culture. As we develop a culture of Assessment we need to ensure that all stakeholders, our learners, our parents, our leaders and our educators are aware of what and why we assess.

That ALL are aware of expectations of assessment and value the four dimensions of Assessment – and are aligned… to the balance of Monitoring, Documentin, Measuring and Reporting across dimensions.

To establish and foster a school-wide culture around assessment , we need:

to be developing assessment capability within the learning community

to develop a comprehensive assessment policy that emphasizes assessment integration

to be creating opportunities for teachers to plan, reflect and moderate assessment collaboratively

to be providing school-wide professional development opportunities around integrating effective assessment

to be reinforcing the role assessment plays in finding out what learners know and can do, and in identifying the next steps for their learning

to be reinforcing the links between monitoring, documenting, measuring and reporting of learning.

So time to reconsider and reflect. If we as PYP practioners believe that assessment is integral to everything we do, we then cannot consider assessement without also considering Learning and Teaching.

As practioners, I encourage you to take time to reflect – on your personal practice, your grade level and your school practice and carry out an honest self-reflection and audit of your practices.

How do you see our learners and our roles in the learning process?

Are you top down ?

Teacher being expert in all?

The ‘fountain’ of knowledge –

Are you as teachers doing all the planning?

Are teachers creating activities or engagements?

Are you working on a strengths based model – meeting our learners where they are – instead of where books, curriculum, companies state where they should be?

Are you providing opportunities for feedback that supports improvement and empowers the learner to make decisions in their learning?

Do you have SYSTEMS in recording, reflecting, and have established collection practice where learners have ownership over the narrative of their learning?

Are you involving parents in the process? Providing a voice for families? Educating them in what learning looks like – taking the focus off the product and shining the light on the process?

Are you ‘sitting beside?

conferencing, talking, building relationships?

Developing Assessment Capable learners?

Are you supporting growth and agency?

Are you truly – putting our learners at the centre of everything you do?

The goal of assessment for learning is not to eliminate failure, but rather to keep failure from becoming chronic and thus inevitable in the mind of the learner.

So let’s find our way back and “Rethink Assessment”……

The full recording can be found here on YOU TUBE

Thank you to SAIBSA and NEEV Academy for the opportunity to share my thinking with your educators.