Assessment - For and of learning.

With term four comes reports, and with reports comes up to date summative assessments.

As a result, summative assessments have already begun being carried out in my classroom - so far students have all sat an IKAN test and some students have completed running records.  The great thing about summative assessment is it shows visible growth that students have made as they have sat the same standardised test earlier on this year.   It also shows me as a teacher where I need to place more focus and which students continue to/or are starting to need specific help or extension and as a result I am able to make changes to my programme.  I was especially pleased with the IKAN results of my students as it demonstrates that our math warm ups and number knowledge revision games have been effective in helping children to grow and maintain their number recall.  The running record results of the students who have sat it so far have all been positive as all students have moved up a reading level and the students have all made progress in their comprehension also.  The moment that inspired me the most with my running record data however was when a student took the ability to transfer her summative assessment and make it into a formative assessment for herself - she said to me - I know that I need to work on inferencing now - I am going to make that part of my self directed learning programme for the rest of the term.

However, the one thing that frustrates me is about summative assessment is that all students are required to sit the same/similar tests - and this is where assessment for learning becomes a real positive - this is no longer the case with assessment for learning.

Each child is provided with feedback and feed forward based on where they are at and the assessment becomes real for them - it becomes a tool that they can utulise - whether in the form of feedback and feedforward from me as a teacher or whether via self/peer assessment and feedback/feedforward.

When I came back on Monday of term 4 I was unsure how much of the work around success criteria influencing assessment for learning that my students would retain as Term 3 had left them all very tired and they had just had two weeks break.  However, within the first block of learning time I overheard a number of students referring back to their success criteria both individually and to help others achieve their WALTs.  This was a real positive for me as it showed that the work that my students had been doing on having clarity about their learning was transferring through all curriculum areas for all students - making assessment something that they then began to see as something that helped them learn rather than something that was there to judge what they had learnt.