At St Peter Chanel, assessment and reporting about student progress and achievement occurs regularly throughout the academic year. Reporting concerns the way that information on and about student learning is communicated to others, including parents. There are many and varied ways of reporting a child’s progress throughout the year. Each has a different purpose and provides different information. Many acknowledge the important role of the end of semester written report and portfolios; however, it must be remembered that often the most effective reporting occurs throughout the year.
Assessing learning
Assessing student learning is an integral part of the school classroom. It improves learning and informs teaching. It is the process through which teachers identify, gather and interpret information about student achievement and learning in order to improve, enhance and plan for further learning.
The Australian Curriculum defines the knowledge, understanding and skills that students are entitled to learn each academic year and these are found in the achievement standards for each learning area. The achievement standard, year level overview and content descriptions, determine the learning intentions and the success criteria that teachers plan for their students. Teachers monitor student progress for both formative and summative assessment purposes.
Formative assessment (Assessment for learning)
Formative assessment allows students and teachers regular opportunities to monitor learning. Students engage in a variety of embedded formative assessment tasks so teachers can check in on their progress regularly throughout a lesson or series of lessons. Teachers use formative assessment information to provide clear and specific feedback to each student to assist them to understand what they need to do to move their learning forward.
Summative assessment (Assessment of learning)
Teachers must also make judgements about student learning against the achievement standard for summative reporting purposes. The purpose of summative assessment is to judge the extent and quality of student learning at a point in time. Teachers use a range of assessment tools to make summative judgements about student learning.
Diagnostic assessment
At St Peter Chanel a number of diagnostic tests occur throughout the year and these include: Concepts about Print and Sound/Letter Knowledge (Prep), PM Benchmarking (Prep, Year 1, Year 2), Writing Analysis Tool (Years 3 - 6), ACER tests PAT M (Maths), PAT R (Reading and Comprehension) and PROBE.
NAPLAN
Students in Year 3 and 5 complete the NAPLAN tests each year. Please refer to the NAPLAN link for further information. www.nap.edu.au
Reporting learning
The written report – twice yearly reporting. In addition to a wide variety of reporting practices that allow students, teachers and parents to monitor and celebrate student progress against the achievement standard, student achievement is reported twice a year in the form of a written report card. This is reported using the Federal Government mandated A - E (or equivalent) reporting framework.
Parent Teacher interviews are held twice yearly to report on each student’s progress. These interviews are held in Term One and Term Three. In addition to this, a Parent/Teacher welcome evening occurs early in Term One so that parents can become familiar with the routines and expectations of the classroom for the year ahead. Parents are also encouraged to contact their child’s teacher at any time throughout the year to discuss their child’s learning at a time convenient to teachers and parents.
Consistency of Teacher Judgement in Reporting. The use of the Australian Curriculum achievement standards as a common reference point for reporting to parents should contribute to national consistency in reporting. To support consistency of teacher judgement, teachers engage in moderation discussions with colleagues at St Peter Chanel and from other BCE schools over the year in order to confirm their judgements about students’ achievements against the achievement standard.