Assessment

Assessment doesn’t come at the end — it is part of the instructional process.

SchoolMate.NET teachers have evolved natural learning environments in which assessment is constructivist in approach and a normal part of daily learning tasks. During the assessment process teachers identify, gather and interpret information about student progress, and begin to refine the next learning experience in the teaching/learning program. Student assessment is viewed as the focal point of improving student outcomes and school reform.

SchoolMate.NET schools employ an outcome and standard approach to learning, and often use what is commonly known as alternative assessment. Performance-based assessment, portfolios, student- designed assessments etc., are regarded by many educators as more reflective of new curricular goals and methods of instruction. SchoolMate.NET schools view alternative assessment as a better way of determining how well students are learning, and how effective instruction is in comparison to traditional forms of assessment.

Assessment decisions always relate to the purpose of the assessment and the outcome to be assessed. Assessment of learning tasks is viewed as the means of:

• determining whether or not students have acquired specific knowledge or skills

• diagnosing student strengths and weaknesses

• planning appropriate instruction

• setting appropriate targets for students

• focusing staff development efforts for teachers

• encouraging curriculum reform, and

• improving teaching and learning materials.
  

Click here to view the school assessment cycles

Using SchoolMate.NET, teachers are also able to access staff designed rubrics, and communicate to the student what is expected in their assessment tasks. SchoolMate.NET teachers are now better able to explain what is expected in a standards-based framework and can develop new standards-based practices to assess their students' work.

In SchoolMate.NET classrooms, teachers and students are able to open scanned worksamples and assess student work against the agreed standard for that outcome. SchoolMate.NET schools have found that setting a standard of worksample provides teachers with a baseline of expectation. It has also provided an online example for students to review when trying to complete the achievement level of their work.

Assessment of outcomes only becomes meaningful when they are well aligned with state and school standards for student performance. SchoolMate.NET teachers make a judgement about individual student performance and these judgements are recorded on SchoolMate.NET against a descriptive scale that supports a rubric profile. Many SchoolMate.NET schools have used Blooms Taxonomy to develop this assessment rubric.

SchoolMate.NET teachers include a variety of assessment strategies in teaching programs to provide multiple sources of information about student achievement. There is a healthy knowledge about the process of assessment and an acknowledgment that poorly designed assessment tasks will result in an exclusion of some students from successful learning experiences. SchoolMate.NET teachers construct assessment tasks that are 'worth teaching for' resulting in anticipated and more excitedly unanticipated outcomes for students participating in the assessment tasks. SchoolMate.NET assessment and reporting practices take into account and address the complexities of ethnicity, culture, gender, socio-economic status, disability and the age of the student. Students have daily opportunities to receive, discuss and clarify information about their progress toward the achievement of agreed learning goals and outcomes.

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