Teach Better Now – Assessment 7 of the NZCALNE (Voc)
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Category Archives: Assessment
AFTER: What does it all mean? Analysing your learners’ literacy and numeracy progress
Next, you need to analyse your learners’ results in relation to key programme demands by:
- Summarising progress results including identifying strengths and needs for each learner.
- Describing implications from the results that can inform the design of future literacy and numeracy teaching and learning strategies
We have prompts for all of this to guide you in the template for Assessment 7. But if f you want to take notes now, you can download just the questions below in a format that you can write on.
Here’s what you’ll need to think about and answer for each learner after carrying out and collecting the final assessment results:
What were the contextualised literacy assessment results?
- What was their final score on the contextualised literacy assessment?
- Can you say roughly what step in the Learning Progressions this relates?
- How does this compare to what they when they did this the first time?
What were the contextualised numeracy assessment results?
- What was their final score on the contextualised literacy assessment?
- Can you say roughly what step in the Learning Progressions this relates?
- How does this compare to what they when they did this the first time?
What improvements and strengths did you see this time?
- What were their improvements?
- What are their strengths now?
- Were there any gains that you didn’t expect?
What are some next steps for this learner?
- What are some further areas this learner needs to work on to succeed in this programme?
- What does this learner still need help with?
What’s the relationship to the demands you identified earlier?
- Any thoughts on what you identified earlier when you mapped the demands of your programme and resources?
What’s the relationship to the needs you identified earlier?
- Any thoughts on what you identified earlier in the literacy and numeracy diagnostic assessments?
What about feedback on their literacy and numeracy progress?
- How did you provide feedback on these last assessments?
AFTER: What evidence do I need to start pulling together for Assessment 7?
There’s a short list below. These aren’t the only things, but now is a good time to recap what you should be doing and supplying as evidence so far.
Here is the checklist from the start of Assessment 7. This is the same as in your assessment template. You need to use and then supply the following things as supporting evidence:
Contextualised literacy
- Learner A: Completed assessment
- Learner B: Completed assessment
Contextualised numeracy
- Learner A: Completed assessment
- Learner B: Completed assessment
Collaborative assessment
- Worksheet or your notes on the process.
As with everything, don’t forget that we always prefer digital forms of evidence: for example, scans, digital photos, PDFs or Word documents.
AFTER: What do I actually do for a collaborative assessment?
There are instructions below for yourself and your learners.
- You can download our template for collaborative assessment here and modify it to suit your learners and teaching context.
Tutor Instructions
- Choose two or three literacy or numeracy activities, goals or learning areas for the group to focus on.
- Record these on the group worksheet. You can type over the prompts and make it your own.
- Decide whether you need to facilitate the discussion or help record the answers.
- Explain the task to your learners. It should be a discussion. You should record the answers if writing is going to distract from the discussion.
- Ask the group to:
- Rate themselves in terms of how they got on with this learning or the goals you focused on. Remember, you should focus this on specific aspects of literacy and numeracy.
- Discuss their answers to the other questions in the template.
- Collect the evidence when they’re finished.
Instructions for the group
- Write down the names of the people in your group and the date.
- Read the questions and discuss what you think you have learned for each activity, goal or learning area.
- Record your answers. Another person including your tutor can do this for you if you want.
What does collaborative assessment look like?
Here are some of the prompts and question from our template. Feel free to download the template, modify the questions or prompts or just work with these if you know what you’re doing. As a group, how did we get on with the learning or meeting the goals we set?
As a group, how did we get on with the learning or meeting the goals we set?
- How did we get on with…[insert literacy or numeracy activity or learning goal 1]?
| a. Great | b. Ok | c. Not so great |
- How did we get on with…[insert literacy or numeracy activity or learning goal 2]?
| a. Great | b. Ok | c. Not so great |
- How did we get on with…[insert literacy or numeracy activity or learning goal 3]?
| a. Great | b. Ok | c. Not so great |
- What did we do well?
- What do we need to work on?
- What have we agreed on?
- What haven’t we agreed on?
AFTER: What is collaborative assessment and how do I use it?
What is a collaborative assessment?
Group collaborative assessment is when two or more learners attempt to assess some aspect or aspects of their own learning together. In other words, the focus in a collaborative assessment is on what the group thinks they have learned.
We covered this in the content for Collection 5. In a nutshell, though:
- Learner self-assessment asks this question: “How good am I?”
Collaborative group assessment asks this question: “How good are we?” - Collaborative assessment can be informal. And the focus might relate to goals that you or the group set earlier, things that they thought they did well, or things they need to work on.
The same guidelines apply here as for self-assessment. This means that collaborative assessment may not be as appropriate for very low-level learners including ESOL learners. Collaborative assessment tends to be discussion-based. And if you have pre-literate learners they may lack the language they need for this.
Collaborative group assessment doesn’t mean that everyone has to agree with everyone else either. For example, a good outcome for a collaborative assessment may include a discussion and list of what people do and don’t agree on with regards to their progress.
We have a collaborative assessment task that you can use or modify that we’ll share in the next section.
AFTER – Kia ora and welcome to Collection 7 of the NZCALNE (Voc)
Kia ora and welcome back once again…!
This is the final collection and you’ll complete your last assessment task. Let’s do a quick review and then get on with finishing everything off.
Here’s an updated outline of what you’ve learned and done so far.
- Collection 1 – CONTEXT: We learned about definitions, frameworks and factors associated with poor adult literacy and numeracy.
- Collection 2 – APPROACHES: We looked at approaches used in learner-centred adult education. This included a range of Māori concepts and approaches.
- Collection 3 – DEMANDS: Here we looked at the Learning Progressions for literacy and numeracy and how to analyse the demands of your programme and teaching resources.
- Collection 4 – STRATEGIES: You developed some broad strategies for embedding literacy and numeracy, as well as learning outcomes for embedding literacy and numeracy into your teaching sessions.
- Collection 5 – BEFORE: We discussed a range of different assessments including diagnostic assessments that you can use in your teaching. And you carried out different kinds of diagnostic processes and related activities.
- Collection 6 – TEACH: Hopefully, you’ve just finished this one including pulling together all the evidence that you need. The focus in this collection was on planning and teaching using embedded literacy and numeracy.
Well done on making it this far. There’s not that much more for you to learn. Just a few things for you to do. You’ll be finished before you can blink.
Here’s what’s ahead in Collection 7
7.1 Just do it: Progress assessment
You need to assess your learners’ literacy and numeracy progress. For most people, this means simply reusing your contextualised literacy and numeracy assessments from Assessment 5. You’ll need to supply evidence for at least two learners. These should be the same two learners that you’ve been tracking through Assessments 5 and 6. You should scan or take a digital copy of the completed assessments.
You also need to have a go at some kind of collaborative assessment. You can get the group to work together and complete this. We have a generic version that you can use or modify. Or you can make your own if you need something more specialised. You’ll need to scan the results or make a digital copy as supporting evidence as well.
7.2 What does it mean?
Here we expect you to analyse your learners’ progress assessment results. We have a template to guide you as always. But there are two main things to make sure you cover. One is summarising your learners’ progress results including identifying strengths and needs. And the other is describing implications from the results that can inform the design of future literacy and numeracy teaching and learning strategies
7.3 Collecting some final information
You’ll need to do a couple of things here to get some evaluation data. One is carrying out learner evaluations. Again, you can use or modify the template in the course notes or make your own. Make sure you scan these as well or make a digital copy as supporting evidence. And you’ll need to ask your supervisor to complete the Supervisor comments and checklist. This should be as per our format. You should also scan this and provide it as supporting evidence. We’ll guide you via the templates.
7.4 Review: The whole project
The very last thing you need to do is review your teaching across the whole project and portfolio overall. This includes your reflections on what went well and what you’d do differently, but also what you need to do moving forward from here. This includes any key changes and improvements you might make, possible goals for your learners, and any other implications for designing your teaching and learning.
How do I gain access to the TEC Assessment Tool?
I’ve written a lot about how to use the TEC’s Literacy and Numeracy for Adults Assessment Tool.
Just type “assessment tool” in the search box on this blog and you’ll find a bunch of things including how to access your learners’ actual responses on the tool.
- But how do you gain access to the tool in the first place?
Well, the answer involves bureaucracy. And filling out forms. And probably getting permission from those above you.
The form is buried online, but the link is here. And the first page looks like the screen shot above.
