Middle Years Programme PART 3 At Diocesan School, assessment is seen as an important part of our three strategic pillars: mātauranga – our education, hapori – our people and kāinga – our place, and contributes to the realisations of the goals contained in our School mission statement.
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ssessment is a collaborative process and enables students, teachers and parents to monitor the learning undertaken by each student in terms of all-round personal growth. Assessment is a crucial part of the learning process, aimed at determining the learners’ levels of understanding, not only to award a level of achievement but also to identify the learning needs of students and to provide feedback on progress. The Dio philosophy of assessment already complements the intentions of the IB Learner Profile and aligns strongly to our current school practices. At Diocesan we see assessment as a means of developing students who are reflective, knowledgeable and balanced. MYP assessment is criterion related and is a process ‘based on determining levels of achievement against previously agreed criteria’. (IBO, 2017, p.123) This ‘criterion-related’ approach represents a philosophy of assessment that is neither ‘norm-referenced’ (where students must be compared to each other and to an expected distribution of achievement) nor ‘criterion-referenced’ (where students must master all strands of specific criteria at lower achievement levels before they can be considered to have achieved the next level). (IBO, 2017, p.79) Each MYP subject group has a set of four objectives (A-D) developed by the IBO that correspond to the assessment criteria against which the students’ work will be assessed. The objectives describe 22
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the knowledge, skills and understanding in each subject group. Teachers address subject objectives through classroom teaching and learning as part of the taught curriculum (see fig.1). Grading is based on the achievement levels attained for each criterion within the numerical bands of 0-8. Students are provided with an assessment rubric that describes the level of achievement required in each band. The achievement levels for the four criteria are based on the assessed summative work and the teacher’s professional judgement. Building on our current practices, assessment in the MYP at Dio will be ongoing, using both formative assessments (assessment for learning) and summative assessments (assessment of learning). Through effective formative assessment (assessment for learning), teachers gather, analyse, interpret and use a variety of evidence to improve student learning and to help students to achieve their potential. Peer and self-assessment can be important elements of formative assessment. Summative assessment (assessment of learning) is generally undertaken at the end of a unit of work. It provides students, teachers and parents with an indication of how a learner has acquired and developed the intended knowledge, skills and understanding. Summative assessment is not the purpose of the teaching and learning process; it gives students opportunities to demonstrate what they have learned.
Final achievement levels for each criterion are based on all the summative assessment information, within each of the four criteria, during a learning period. Formative assessment results, however, also play a part in professional decision making when determining an achievement level. This is done using a best-fit approach ‘in which teachers work together to establish common standards against which they evaluate each student’s achievement holistically’. (IBO, 2017, p.79) Teachers use a wide range of assessment tools to measure student learning. When possible, assessment tasks are designed to have an authentic context where students use and apply their knowledge and skills in a real-world setting. This encourages students to see the wider purpose and application of the work they are learning and being assessed on. As part of the MYP implementation process this year, teachers have been using both formative and summative strategies as they align with the MYP assessment requirements. In Year 7 PE, the students have been exploring how movement and communication can change in different
