Day 2 Formal and Informal Assessments

   Today's session resonated with me as it gets down to the nitty gritty of assessment and how it can inform us of specific next steps and a way forward to implement progress for each child. We target interventions that are required at a specific time in the child's development. We also use a range of formal and informal assessments to make more reliable judgements on children's progress and achievement. 

It was heartening to have the importance and relevance of Reading Mileage reinforced, as I agree it should be embedded at a young age, if developing life long readers is one of our professional goals. This is when the teacher can pin point student's present reading interests from the Reader Profiles to steer the child/children to more books of the same ilk. At the same time this gives children freedom of choice to step up and become responsible for their own reading progress by reading the types of books they love in their own time. Pearl of wisdom: "There is a high relationship between Reading in our own time and our academic achievement."

Becoming familiar with Te Mataiaho, English (0 - 6) was made a little clearer and easier with our session on using assessment to inform our teaching. 

                        Using assessment to inform teaching

The Teacher Workbook is a marvellous resource to have at our fingertips. I really enjoyed this part. A deep analysis of the PAT Tests (and where to locat all the info!!!) can inform the teacher of student strengths and also 'next steps' in learning. It is an empowering tool for teachers to use when preparing Task Boards or subsequent reading activities for learners. Knowing the areas where they require development, understanding and practice, allow for targeted learning tasks to be created. 

The last session for the day involved the essential use and rewriting of Learning Intentions so that students understand what they are learning. It was a good reminder of the imprtance of choosing the correct words - being explicit. This example below shows how the LI's need to be simple yet specific, especially when taken from the curriculum:

 Comprehension | Vocabulary | Phase 2 | Year 5

“infer from context clues and use an increasing knowledge of morphology to independently determine the meaning of words with more than one affix (e.g., ‘exportable’ is made up of ‘ex’ (out of) , ‘port’ (to carry), and ‘able’, turning it into an adjective describing an item that can be carried out of a place).”

WALT

• Determine what words mean using context clues and our knowledge of morphology;

• Use a range of prefixes and suffixes (affixes) to understand the meaning of a word.

 Finally, Success Criteria 'describe how students will go about chieving a learning intention or how that will know they have learnt it.' They make VISIBLE what learners will be able to do to achieve their learning. 

Looking forward to creating a Taskboard for my students to engage with during Reading.