Assessment case studies from school management

[Slide says innovative assessment integrated modules]

Deputy Principal: Right from when the school started, we looked really carefully at back mapping the New Zealand Curriculum document and that we use that as a driver of our teaching and learning programme rather than necessarily assessment and NCEA.

But we wanted to back map what are the capabilities,what are the key concepts, what are the skills that students might need to get them their higher up?

The students have integrated modules where there's two curriculum areas taught together, and the connections between those learning areas are made right from the get go.

We have a form of speed dating here where groups of teachers across different curriculum areas will get together, they'll look at the key concepts, the big concept for a term, which has come directly from the New Zealand Curriculum document.

So we have big concepts like Citizenship, Transformation that can sit across different curriculum areas. The teachers talk about what that might look like in their own curriculum area and they find connections, and we try to make sure that all learning is contextualised and that it's real world and authentic.

We look really carefully at aligning curriculum assessment and pedagogy because there can be with senior NCEA, it can be that this assessment becomes the driver and that people teach to standards. Rather, we start with the teaching and learning programme, what's relevant, what's authentic, what's meaningful for the kids? How can we then get the assessment to align to with that while still having our student-centred pedagogy in everything that we do?

So there's a lot of student agency and voice in the programming at Year 11, and the students still have 2 modules where subjects are integrated. So 4 learning areas together overall, as well as some standalone subjects. 

Year 12, we keep one integrated module and it becomes a little bit more specialised for the students, opting in to what might be suiting their pathways. I've seen innovation in many traditional settings.

I think it comes down to a mindset of teachers to be open minded, to be putting the student at the centre and thinking about how they could do things differently.

If it's not a whole systems change in a school where the senior leadership are driving it, there will still be practitioners out there that you can connect with.

And thinking about the kids in your class. What's authentic to them? Not what's authentic to me as a teacher. Ask them. Have some conversations with them.

[Slide says innovative assessment enquiry learning]

Deputy Principal: Our school is based on enquiry learning and that's really the fundamental pedagogy we’re built on, so we had a lot of requests and discussion from staff and parents and students about what happens with our senior school because up until this point our senior school resembled a very traditional school.

Students were going through our lower middle school and upper middle school using it enquiry learning intensively, and moving up to the senior school and reverting back to something quite conventional.

So we were still trying to come up with a plan about how we could continue the enquiry learning process, right through until senior school.

We had, 11 of us got together, we sort of started mapping out what we thought it could look like, until we got to the point of something that resembled what we've got this year in terms of the future focus class, where students will spend all of their time, spend much, most of their time doing a personal project of their choice.

And we would then use that project to then decide what assessment would then form naturally out of it. So it was the learning that came first and then the assessment came after that.

There is a lot in terms of learning, in terms of resilience and self-management and for the kids, you need to work on developing more deliberate teaching of skills like teamwork and self management, and we're going to extend it to Year 12 for next year.

That’ll look a bit different to the Year 11 course because Year 12 [unknown] high stakes in terms of, you know, the applications and things like that.

We're now going to insist that in Year 12 students do 3 mainstream subjects and then the rest of their timetable is for future focus work within projects.

So a bit of a compromise there, that'd be like the main body of the students that are doing next year in Year 12, there will be a lot of flexibility there for students who are going to polytech or doing a trade.

There's no reason why they couldn't do their whole education as project work, in particular if you want to go off and do mechanical engineering, automotive, plumbing or be an electrician or something if you want to be an electrician, why don't you go and make something really cool and then use that when you go to polytech to say look this is what I can do already.

I mean, wouldn't it make a lot of sense, and draw your English and Maths stuff into that, certainly Technology and a bit of Science.

To me that would be a lot more beneficial for that student going off to be an electrician than having them sitting in the classroom doing, you know, 5 traditional subjects.

[Slide says innovative assessment reflective practise]

Head of Faculty: We decided we wanted to look at differentiated learning and trying to come up with a plan for integrating our ethos of the school, which is enquiry learning.

We wanted to make sure that it gave the students opportunity to learn within context that were really rich and meaningful for themselves and not as a class as such.

And we'd been looking at ways we could do it so that we can incorporate all of the subjects they wanted to within a context, for a single context.

The students have picked their projects, they have developed their projects, and as they've gone through, different areas have come into it.

So Technology, the design brief has gone through Technology. Science has been included in aspects where possible. English has been included right across the board. Maths has been fitted in where possible and it's all been very fluid and encouraging the students to not think about the credits but have a specific idea in mind about where they're going with their achievement and how they’re developing their project to gain credits without actually necessarily knowing they're gaining the credits.

So they've got an assessment that they're working towards, but they don't actually necessarily use assessment to drive their learning.

We have meetings every week, so every Tuesday we have meetings. But we also every second Thursday we have a meeting as well. So we take out a block every second Thursday where we sit down and discuss the students.

We look at forward planning and what went well, what didn't go well. So we're doing reflective practise in that respect as well. And that's really helpful for keeping, keeping tabs on how the students are going and also for how teachers going and how they finding finding things and ways we can improve and change things.

[Slide says innovative assessment setting up]

Maths Head of Faculty: So it was kind of okay. But there were concerns of those middle students who kind of just weren't achieving because they didn't really want to be in Maths anyway, and they, the attendance wasn't that good, so they basically were failing everything because they were just never there for enough of the teaching.

And also if they were in that course, they really then couldn't access some of our later, because they certainly couldn't do Calc in Year 13. And even on that course would have been a bit difficult.

Three of us took up Bernie's offer and we went over to Hutt Valley High for a day, and we had a look round and we talked to people and we saw the set up and we came back to school and I did a kind of PowerPoint. We had a discussion and then what were the pros and what were the cons and what would be good for teachers? What would be good for students? Where would the issues be?

We put together a presentation. I got Tom to come along to that as well, partly because he's the principal, but also partly because he's a Maths teacher. And therefore I thought would, you know, understand more what was going on. And we said, who would be interested in giving this a go?

And every single teacher bar one said, Yeah, that's what we'd like to do. I hope I was really clear that there would be no illusion about how much work it would involve in that first year. Um, I, that's what they wanted to do. And they still said yes.

So we would do things differently next year. So we'd run a meeting after about 3 weeks of Term 1. And we’d invite any parents in who wanted to ask those questions. We didn't do that last year or at the beginning of this year. Partly, I think, because we weren't too sure ourselves how we thought it would go until we'd done it. But we meet. We have a meeting every Wednesday after school. So that's again been a time I’ve asked them to commit to because that's the only way we could discuss, you know, all the things that were coming up and making sure people were free to ask questions if they weren't sure, because none of us are sure, you know this is a new thing for us.

So we've changed things along the way. We'll change things again for next year, but we'll definitely still be doing it. The whole idea that NCEA was based around: assess when they're ready. And clearly, if you miss half the lessons, you're not likely to be ready to do an assessment. So even students who are taking a whole term to do one standard are getting it. Most of them are passing, which wasn't the case before, I don't know at the top end yet whether there's more Excellences or less, I don't know that. But definitely more are passing then were because they can take that extra time.

You have to have your faculty on board and you have to have enough teachers. I feel also that you've got to get your SLT on board as well, because in the end, if things aren't quite going as well as you want, you need a backup, you need somebody to say, okay, alright, it hasn't quite worked, but we still think the idea was right. And we'll back you to to carry it on.

I think you need to have the kind of research behind it. We were fortunate in that Bernie had all that.

So to be honest, we didn't do much more ourselves. We just we just went with his and we looked at some of the stuff he’d done. And he's again, really lucky that we've got him because he can do that side of it now. He's the one that's been in touch with you people and gone off to Auckland and and done the sell and the rest of us can stay here and make sure that it works here.