Finding out more about assessment/aromatawai

Te Kete Ipurangi: The TKI Assessment Community

www.tki.org.nz/r/assessment/index_e.php

The TKI Assessment Community provides teachers, school managers, and boards of trustees with:

• relevant professional development resource materials;
• a regularly updated news page, which alerts users to the latest additions to the site;
• up-to-date articles on good formative practice (the Readings and Research section);
• information about other assessment tools to help teachers reflect on their teaching and set clear goals for school-wide development plans;
• templates and resources to guide schools in their self-review programmes.

Following feedback from teachers and professional development providers, the Assessment Community has recently been revamped. Navigation has been enhanced, readings and abstracts have been updated, and additional resources have been added.

Site users can request phone tutorials for guided tours around the Assessment Community with a TKI online editor. Some of the most visited resources or areas are described below in more detail.

The assessment tools search facility

A bank of assessment materials, including the ARBs, the exemplars, and asTTle, are linked to specific achievement objectives from the New Zealand curriculum statements in mathematics, science, and English.

asTTle What Next

What Next is an indexed database of educational resources that teachers can use in conjunction with the tools on the asTTle CD-ROM (see update on asTTle). Teachers can also use What Next to make their own selection of materials, based on their professional knowledge of their students' learning requirements.

AToL workshops

The AtoL team has also published four online workshops for primary and secondary teachers on formative assessment, feedback, and how to use the asTTle and other assessment tools. These workshops are being used both by schools participating in AToL and AtoL Online programmes and by teachers, syndicates, and curriculum departments undertaking their own professional development initiatives.

The exemplars/tauaromahi

The main exemplars home page gives access to background materials from the exemplars trial, including the reports The Development of the Exemplars in New Zealand: Background and Rationale and He Whakamātau ā-motu mō ngā Tauarohmahi. The latter report includes suggestions on how teachers of te reo Māori could use the tauaromahi.

The exemplars home page for each curriculum area has links to all of the exemplars currently in print and additional online only exemplars that were developed and trialled at the same time as those selected for print. Online, teachers can choose from:

• seventy-five exemplars for written language;
• forty exemplars for visual language;
• thirty-six exemplars for the arts;
• thirty-seven exemplars for mathematics.

In May, forty-six science exemplars and thirty-six exemplars in technology will be added, at the same time as the print sets of these materials are delivered to schools. The first tauaromahi for te reo Māori and pāngarau will also be delivered to schools by midyear in print and online.

Links are provided to other materials, for example, relevant curriculum documents and the National Certificate of Educational Achievement (NCEA) achievement and unit standards on the New Zealand Qualifications Authority's website.

The online exemplars are also provided in PDF format for downloading.

The online exemplar materials can be accessed at www.tki.org.nz/r/assessment/exemplars/index_e.php

Observing student work
The arts exemplars are the first of the exemplar materials to include video clips of sequences of student work in the classroom. (As well as being provided online, the video clips have also been made available on CD-ROM to maximise teachers' access to them.) The video clips allow teachers and students to observe and listen to those elements of the arts disciplines that cannot be displayed in a static image.

Please note that Resource Link carries detailed descriptions of the exemplar print and electronic materials. Schools can also contact Customer Service, free phone 0800 800 565, to enquire about these.

Case studies
Online case studies in the Assessment Community amplify the feedback from teachers on how the exemplars are helping teachers and students to engage in rich discussions of student work and build important partnerships focused on improving learning.

A study from Five Forks School (in the Self/Peer Assessment section) shows how students used the exemplars to assess their own learning, which lead to a school-wide improvement in writing. Another case study from Kamo Intermediate School (in the same section) also shows how students were able to use the exemplars to assess their work, identify important features, and set appropriate goals.

Assessment CAST

Assessment CAST is a module in a computer-aided statistics teaching resource developed by Massey University. It can be used by teachers and school management to improve understanding of statistics. The module covers how to sort, summarise, and display assessment data graphically for use in planning and reporting, feedback, analysing trends or making comparisons, and informing the next step for class or school-wide programmes.

Assessment CAST is a stand-alone module and must be saved to your computer. A sitemap on TKI provides an overview on the contents in Assessment CAST. You can print a copy or the sitemap to help you navigate through the module. Access CAST at www.tki.org.nz/r/assessment/three/assess_cast_e.php

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