teaching portfolio

 

Clusters: 1 (Standards 1 - 5) | 2 (Standards 6-9) | 3 (Standard 10)

Standards: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

 

Standard 5 - Assess and report constructively on student learning

 

John Hattie (1999) claimed that the most important factor influencing achievement is feedback. By using formative assessment promoting specific and timely feedback (Clark, 2010) with, and between my students I strive to build students’ confidence and fine-tune their skills. I believe that with all summative assessment particularly in ICT and IPT the process is as important as the result. My aim is to create authentic assessment in line with the curriculum, which encourages feedback and rewards milestones.

 

I conducted a game making unit using the Scratch software for a grade nine Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) class of ten boys. No students had been ascertained as being impeded by learning difficulties or disabilities, and diversity was limited to ability. The unit was set against the Victorian Essential Learnings Standards level 5.25-5.5 (Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority, 2006).

 

During the course of the unit I designed learning experiences that scaffolded the skills required, and tailored them to skills of the students based on my informal assessment of them. On one occasion, a student had effectively “given up” with a problem. Having discovered his love of basketball, I contextualised the tasks towards his passions as well as encouraging him to do as much “hands on” kinaesthetic work as possible. I often had him working through his problems with me on the whiteboard (artefact 1 p22 – see Habits of Mind).

 

The summative project was structured such that each step needed to be completed before continuing to the next (artefact 3). Each step was reviewed and specific feedback given to the student before they continued on to the next phase (artefact 2 p2-5). This laid a solid foundation for the next phase work, and a place to fall back on when encountering problems later on.

The assessment was authentic as it allowed students to create a real game which could be played online, and encouraged students to use real human-computer interface devices such as game controllers, motorised Lego and a Picoboard. The final results were positive with students using the feedback given at each stage to enhance their ideas and develop some extremely creative games (artefact 2).

 

As a new teacher I will focus heavily on formative assessment. It gives students more opportunity to display their abilities in less stressful situations and allows me the opportunity to provide specific feedback on their work. In the future I hope to utilise assessment as part of instruction with students utilising metacognition by participating in the assessment process (Arends & Kilcher, 2010). I believe this combination in conjunction with well structured summative assessment will lead to higher student outcomes.

 

References

Arends, I. & Kilcher, A. (2010). Teaching for Student Learning. New Jersey: Taylor and Francis.

Clark, I. (2010). Formative Assessment: 'There is nothing so practical as a good theory'. Australian Journal of Education, 54 (3), 341-352.

Hattie, J. (1999). Influence on Student Learning. Retrieved on 8th October, 2001 fromhttp://www.education.auckland.ac.nz/webdav/site/education/shared/hattie/docs/
influences-on-student-learning.pdf.