Kia ora ano and welcome to the next exciting instalment

If you’re reading this it’s likely that you’re up to Assessment 5 in the new and improved NZCALNE (Voc). Well done you…!

Like the other content, it will be live on Pathways Awarua as soon as possible. But as always, you can find it on Graeme’s blog in the meantime.

If you do stop by the blog, make sure you leave a comment if you find something helpful. It’s a useful way of letting us know what’s working for you and what’s not. Your comments help us make the content better for everyone.

The new Assessment 5 has the best of what was in the old qualification as well as some new material. The focus is on diagnostic assessment and all the things that should be in place before you deliver your embedded literacy and numeracy teaching.

Here’s an overview of the four sections:

5.1 What are the tools and processes?

5.2 Just do it: Using diagnostic assessment?

5.3 What does it all mean?

5.4 Using learning plans

There’s a lot of content included in this Collection. And if you already know something or you’re already doing something that’s discussed, then feel free to skip ahead to the next relevant section. You can always come back to it later.

Also, we recommend that you download the assessment template early in the process. This is so that you know what the task involves. That way you can start working on the different sections as soon as you are ready.

What’s Assessment 5 all about?

The idea with this Collection and the assessment task is to make sure that you understand what assessment is and how you can use it in the context of adult literacy and numeracy education.

We need to make sure that you understand some of the different kinds of assessment, including diagnostic assessment. And you need to have a go at using some different tools and processes.

Once you’ve tried some of these different kinds of assessments with your learners, you’ll need to tells us what your results mean. And as part of that, we’ll also have a look at learning plans and how to use them for literacy and numeracy learning.

Follow the links below

Like we said before, it’s a good idea to start with the assessment template. You can always come back and dip into these resources as you need to. Email us if you don’t already have the template and checklist.

Otherwise, here’s the new and revised content for Assessment 5.

5.1 What are the tools and processes?

In this module, we look at the kinds of assessment tools and processes appropriate to your learners. This includes a look at different kinds of assessments including diagnostic. We also talk about how to how to create a more positive environment for assessing your learners.

A brief review of Collections 1 to 4 and an overview of Collection 5

What are our tools and processes?

• What is diagnostic assessment?
• What is formative assessment?
• Why is formative assessment so important?
• What is summative assessment?
• What is contextualised assessment?
• What is non-contextualised assessment?
• What is learner self-assessment?
• What is collaborative assessment?
• What is the Assessment Tool?

How do I deal with learners’ stress and anxieties about assessment?

• How do I deal with learners’ test anxiety?
• How do I deal with test fatigue?
• How do I deal with other environmental factors?

5.2 Just do it: Using diagnostic assessment?

This is where the rubber starts to hit the road. We’ll set you up for this, but you’ll need to conduct literacy and numeracy diagnostic assessment of your learners.

We’ll look at a range of different tools you can use and adapt. Chances are you’ll already know some of this. And you won’t need all of the examples. So just pick and choose the parts that are relevant to helping you complete the assessment.

Things you need to know

• Who are my learners?
• Do I need to work with my whole group or just a couple of learners?
• What literacy and numeracy assessments do I need to use with my learners?

The Assessment Tool

• How do I use the Assessment Tool Reading or Starting Points Assessments?
• How do I use the Assessment Tool Numeracy Assessments?

Self Assessment

• How can I get my learners to self-assess their attitudes to reading?
• How can I get my learners to self-assess their attitudes to maths?
• What is maths anxiety and what do I need to know about it?

Developing your own contextualised literacy diagnostics

• What are some guidelines for designing my own contextualised literacy and numeracy assessments?
• How do I create my own contextualised literacy diagnostic?
• How do I create a contextualised vocab diagnostic I can use?
• Pro tips for creating your own contextualised vocabulary diagnostic assessments

Examples of literacy diagnostic assessments

• More examples – a contextualised vocabulary diagnostic for farming
• More examples – Listening and speaking diagnostics
• More examples – Reading diagnostics
• More examples – Diagnostics for writing

Developing your own contextualised numeracy assessments

• How do I create a contextualised numeracy diagnostic I can use?
• How do I create a contextualised numeracy diagnostic for a financial literacy class?
• How do I create a contextualised numeracy diagnostic for my painting course?
• How do I create a contextualised numeracy diagnostic for my farming programme?
• How do I create a contextualised numeracy diagnostic for my ESOL workplace literacy programme?
• Pro tips for creating your own contextualised numeracy diagnostics

Examples of numeracy diagnostics

• What are some examples of other numeracy diagnostics that I can adapt or modify?
• Number sequence diagnostic
• Place value diagnostic
• Number facts diagnostic
• Other examples of numeracy diagnostic assessments from the Learning Progressions
• More examples – Number diagnostics
• More examples – Diagnostics for statistics
• More examples – Measurement diagnostics

5.3 What does it all mean?

In this module, we cover what you need to do to make sense of your learners’ literacy and numeracy diagnostic assessment results. This includes mapping your learners and working out any implications for teaching. You’ll also need to review some aspects of how you administered the assessments to your learners.

• Review questions for when you’ve collected your diagnostic assessment results
• Understanding your learners’ diagnostic assessment results

5.4 Using learning plans

You’ll learn how to write up learning plans showing goals, strengths, and needs.

• How do you write learning plans with a focus on literacy and numeracy.
• What does a literacy and numeracy-focused learning plan look like?

If you’re stuck, please get in touch with us by email here: assess@alec.ac.nz or by texting or calling Graeme on 021-857-786.

What does a good learning plan look like?

You’ll need to complete two learning plans for your NZCALNE (Voc). One for each of the two learners that you’re tracking through this project work.

Happily, we have an easy-to-use format for learning plans. And we’ve built this into the template for Assessment 5.

If you’re ready to write up the learning plans you can do this directly in the template for Assessment 5. If you’re not ready, you have a look at the format below. Or 5.4MASTERLearningPlanTemplate.

Individual Learning Plan

Name:

Tutor:  

Class or group:  

Date:

Literacy Focus

What specific literacy goal did you set?

• The main literacy goal is to …

Which specific literacy progression are you focusing on?

• We’re targeting the following literacy progression:

How will they know when they’ve achieved the goal?

• We’ll both know when we’ve achieved this because …

What strategies are you going to use? How are they going to achieve the goal?

• One strategy that we will use is …
• Another strategy we might try is …

What’s the timeframe for this?

• We’re going to try and complete this by …

What changes do they need to make in order to succeed?

• One change they will need to make is …
• Another possible change is …

Numeracy Focus

What specific numeracy goal did you set?

• The main literacy goal is to …

Which specific numeracy progression are you focusing on?

• We’re targeting the following numeracy progression:

How will they know when they’ve achieved the goal?

• We’ll both know when we’ve achieved this because …

What strategies are you going to use? How are they going to achieve the goal?

• One strategy that we will use is …
• Another strategy we might try is …

What’s the timeframe for this?

• We’re going to try and complete this by …

What changes do they need to make in order to succeed?

• One change they will need to make is …
• Another possible change is …

Good work… One final short module and we will have covered everything that you need for Collection 5.

The last thing here is how to write learning plans that focus on literacy and numeracy. Specifically, we want you to use the data that you’re getting from your diagnostic assessments and use it in a constructive way.

Here’s what you need to do next:

• Write up learning plans showing learner goals, strengths, and needs.
• Discuss these with your learners as appropriate

You may already have learning plans in place for your learners that focus on the unit standards that they need to achieve or other milestones in your programme.

What we’re after now relates to the next steps for your learners in terms of their literacy and numeracy development.

Why do I have to make learning plans for my learners?

We think that it’s important to do something sensible with the rich information that you’re now getting from the diagnostic questions that you ask. One simple action here is to create literacy and numeracy-focused learning plans for your learners.

You may already have learning plans in place for your learners. If that’s the case, you might want to just add the relevant literacy and numeracy step that your learners need to focus on.

Using learning plans are good practice for any kind of teaching. Here are some guidelines for developing learning plans. You should

Do it together

Develop and negotiate them together with your learners if you can. Not all learners will have the capacity to think about their learning. But it’s a goal you should be working towards.

Set specific goals

These goals need to be SMART. This means that the goals need to be:

• Specific
• Measurable
• Achievable
• Realistic; and have a sensible
• Timeframe

Be explicit

We need you to be explicit about which particular progression (or progressions) you are focusing on. For example, “We’re targeting the vocabulary and reading comprehension progressions”.

Begin with the end in mind

Your learner needs to know when they’ve achieved the goal. If it’s too broad they’ll never achieve it. Likewise, if they can’t see a clear end or some way of knowing that they’ve achieved the goal they will lose motivation.

Describe the strategies you’ll use

You need strategies in place if you want to see real gains. You’ve had plenty of time to think about how you’re going to work on this. Say what the strategies are that you intend to use.

Set a clear time frame

This is part of SMART goal setting. Your goals should be specific enough that they are achievable within a relatively short timeframe. For example, three months or less.

The more pushed for time you are, the narrower, and more specific you should be about everything.

Identify changes needed

The specific gains that you want are not going to happen in the timeframe you’ve set without effort. Learning can be fun, but it does require effort from your learner. Identify the changes that your learner will need to make if they want to achieve the goal.

If you think back to the idea that our definitions for literacy and numeracy include observable behaviours then you can highlight some of the behaviours that you expect to see.