Assessment & Reporting

On the 30th of January, parents and guardians will be able to log into PowerSchool to see their child’s report card. What you are seeing not only represents your child’s academic growth and progress throughout the first half of the school year, but also months of work by your child’s teacher.

Step # 1 - Instructional Design

Your child’s teacher studies the curriculum they are required to teach at their particular grade level. There is a separate one for each subject. They design instructional experiences that will ensure your child meets the multiple learner outcomes that are part of that curriculum. These instructional designs also include assessments and are modified for the different learning needs in the classroom.

Step # 2 - Formative and Summative Assessments

How can students demonstrate their understanding of a learner outcome? This question gets answered by teachers when they include multiple means of assessment into their instructional design.

Formative assessment is a means of “checking as you go” while the students are engaged in their learning. This happens daily in the form of checklists, conversations, class discussions, pictures plus many more strategies. How the students are doing along the way provides the teacher with information necessary to make instructional adjustments along the way.

Summative Assessments occur at the end of a topic or unit and often take the form of a quiz, assignment, project, presentation or test. These will include most or all of the learner outcomes that were covered in that section of the curriculum.

Step # 3 - Body of Evidence

How does a teacher decide if a student achieves a 1, 2, 3 or 4 on a report card stem? Throughout the report period from September to January, teachers collect evidence of a child’s learning in each subject. This evidence gets examined in December and January to see if, and to what degree, each student has met the learner outcomes that were taught during this time. While much of the summative assessment evidence is consistent between students, the formative assessment evidence can vary greatly depending on a student's learner profile. Students have different ways of demonstrating their understanding, so the bodies of evidence used to assess their learning can vary greatly.

Step # 4 - Reporting

Teachers share the assessment decisions they have made by reviewing the bodies of evidence collected for each student. These are reported by highlighting specific areas of success and specific areas for growth looking forward.

The reporting process takes several weeks of work over and above the regular day to day demands that are placed on our teaching staff. It is a very important step in the learning cycles of each of our students and often helps to ensure the teacher, students and parent / guardian are moving forward together.

It is important for parents / guardians to remember that the learner outcomes have been created to reflect the student’s achievement by the end of that grade level. Since we are only at the halfway mark of the school year, it is reasonable for many students not to have met that grade level expectation yet. In most cases, student achievement will increase as the school year progresses.

Kindergarten Learning Task

When is a picture more than just a picture? These fabulous winter landscapes from our Kindergarten students have tremendous esthetic value on their own. I am sure they will make it onto the family fridge pretty soon. If we dig a little deeper, there are 4 different learner outcomes from the kindergarten curriculum contained within these wonderful works of art.

By completing this Art project, each student demonstrated that they ;

• Can cut out simple shapes
• Can identify 2D shapes (circle, triangle, square, rectangle)
• Can use a variety of colours to create Art
• Can follow 3 step instructions

Stay warm and have a great week !