Assessment

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Extract from an online course about **understanding by design**. The clip is not Jay McTighe but go to the "Link to web resources" page and click on the "Inquiry Schools" site for more.

Assessment as Feedback
The prime objective of assessment in the PYP is to provide feedback on the learning process. Bruner states that students should receive feedback “not as a reward or punishment, but as information” (Bruner 1961: 26). Teachers need to select assessment strategies and design assessment instruments to reflect clearly the particular learning outcomes on which they intend to report. They need to employ a range of strategies for assessing student work that take into account the diverse, complicated and sophisticated ways that individual students use to understand their experiences. Additionally, the PYP stresses the importance of both student and teacher self-assessment and reflection. **Example** Student-led conferences in a school with a very diverse population provide the opportunity for students to guide their parents or guardians through their recent “journey of learning”, using their mother tongue. Conference tables set up in each classroom are prepared with laminated question prompts translated into multiple languages, for the parents to refer to. The students take their parents or guardians to the tables, where they explain the objectives of the conference: to highlight their “journey of learning”, their personal growth, their challenges and their achievements. The students guide the adults through the contents of their portfolios, discussing the objectives of each included item and indicating their successes and room for growth. Each student has a “personal target sheet” to fill out as they reflect on successes and challenges. Teachers are present but stand apart from the conferences. As they guide the parents or guardians from room to room, the students have a “passport” to be signed by all teachers, to ensure that their development relevant to all areas of the curriculum is discussed. The assessment strategies and instruments—rubrics, anecdotal records, checklists, anchor papers, continuums, portfolios of work—proposed by the PYP are designed to accommodate a variety of intelligences (Gardner 1993) and ways of knowing (Bruner 1986). Where possible, they should provide effective means of recording students’ responses and performances in real-life situations that have genuine problems to solve. These authentic assessment strategies may be used in conjunction with other forms of assessment, such as standardized tests, in order to assess both student performance and the efficacy of the programme. (See //Making the PYP happen: A curriculum framework for international primary education//, page 50, for the “IBO position on standardized achievement tests”.) In its approach to assessment, the PYP recognizes the importance of assessing the actual process of inquiry as well as the result of inquiry, and aims to integrate and support both. The teacher is expected to record the detail of the inquiry initiated by students in order to look for an increase in the substance and depth of the inquiry. The teacher needs to consider: · if the nature of students’ inquiry develops over time—if, in fact, they are asking questions of increasing · depth and providing evidence of the capacity to think critically · if students are becoming aware that real problems require solutions based on the integration of knowledge that spans and connects many subject areas · if students are demonstrating mastery of skills and an accumulation of a comprehensive knowledge base to enable them to conduct their inquiries successfully, find solutions and solve problems · if students are demonstrating both independence and an ability to work collaboratively.