Assessment News
For the 2008-2009 school year, the AFL program will assess students in the spring in Mathematics in Grades 5, 8 and 11 and in Reading in Grades 4, 7 and 11. Information will be sent to schools closer to the assessment dates.
An online writing pre-assessment package is available for teachers to use to help prepare students for the AFL writing assessment. It contains graphic organizers and ideas for teaching writing that can be used by teachers at anytime .
To access any AfL document in reading, mathematics or writing (teacher handbook, student test booklet, etc.) go to: Assessment for Learning Program.
New for 2008-2009
Our school division has also begun work to complement provincial initiatives by convening groups of teachers to identify essential outcomes and indicators in the critical areas of literacy and numeracy. These developments will better enable teachers to focus on the most important outcomes and build creative programming as students require. Some of this work will be undertaken jointly with our colleagues in Saskatoon Public Schools as part of the Learning Alliance between the two boards of education. When combined with the provincial redesign process, this work will bring increased curricular clarity for most grade levels over the next one to three years.
To correspond with these curricular developments, our school division will also be working with teacher teams to develop value-added assessments in literacy and numeracy. Value-added assessments are based on a pre-and-post format that will enable teachers to have an assessment for formative purposes early in the school year and a corresponding assessment later in the term to provide a measure of progress. These assessments will supplement teacher-made assessments. They will not be high-stakes assessments.
This is a major departure for our school division and will require the efforts of significant numbers of school-based and division office staff. To support this work, some current assessments will be discontinued at the system level to enable a redirecting of resources.
As a result, the following assessments will be discontinued at the system level for 2008-09:
Grade 3 Math Problem Solving
Grade 6 Math Problem Solving
Grade 9 Math Problem Solving
Grade 7 Science Problem Solving
Grade 10 Science Problem Solving
Schools may continue to utilize any of these assessments as part of regular student evaluation practices, instructional planning and supporting Learning Improvement Plans. The Department of Instruction and School Services (ISS) will continue to provide existing assessment materials to your school and support the scoring of student work. The scoring process continues to be a highly regarded professional growth experience.
Grade 10 ELA Writing Benchmarks
A review of our assessment schedule has pointed out a concern for our Grade 10 students next spring. Next year the Provincial Assessment for Learning (AFL) for Grade 10 Reading is scheduled for the month of April 2009, as well, the Math 20 AFL is scheduled for the last week of May and first two weeks of June 2009. Our grade 10 students will be assessed in Science 10 Problem Solving in term one and in term two, so we feel it not consistent with our beliefs and practice to do an ELA Writing Benchmark with them at that time as well. This cohort would be asked to participate in too many assessments in the spring. On-going formative assessments tied to the classroom and to curriculum outcomes will be relied on for this group in ELA next year.
Submission of First-Steps Plotting
On-going review of our assessment schedule and our assessment practice has directed us to re-consider our requirement for schools to centrally submit First-Steps Reading and Writing plotting data. On consideration of the nature and most appropriate use of this data, and as the results represent a student’s “position” on a developmental continuum we feel that centrally aggregating this data may not be the most effective practice to ensure student achievement.
Teachers and support personnel need to use the plotting results to inform practice and adjust their instruction accordingly. Other divisional measures such as Writing Benchmarks are better suited to the aggregation of results. As well, the development of our own Value-Added Assessments (VAA), that are intended to leverage the power of both aggregate student achievement data and individual student growth measures into a consolidated systemic assessment structure will be forthcoming. Central support for the analysis of First-Steps plotting will be in place to facilitate the on-going use of this important data at the school level, specifically as these measures relate to and provide support for your School Improvement Plans.
Templates to enter and view your schools results will be provided to you. As well, we will continue help teachers, school based support personnel, and administrators to interpret and work with your own schools’ results.
