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Teachers Iearn about new assessment techniques

By Rob Swystun, CentraI PIains HeraId-Leader
Posted 1 year ago
How students are assessed in school was the subject of a work session hosted by the Portage la Prairie School
Division Tuesday and Wednesday.
The school division invited Cassandra Erkens with the Assessment Trainers nstitute in Portland, Ore., to conduct a
workshop about formative assessment of students in the classroom.
Erkens said the traditional way students are assessed is no longer viable. That would usually consist of students
taking an examination, receiving their grade and simply moving onto the next lesson. Formative assessment, she
said, includes students in the process.
"Kids need to be partners in the journey," she said in an interview during a break in the workshop at the Portage
ndustrial Exhibition Association office Wednesday.
With the formative assessment, she noted, students would receive their tests back along with a self-assessment
sheet where they could go through the test and check for themselves not just what questions they got wrong, but why
they got them wrong. They'll be able to check if it was a matter of just not doing the exercise correctly or if they really
didn't understand the question at all.
This will help them identify their own weaknesses, Erkens noted.
Erkens said she was quite happy with how open participants were at the Portage workshop. The reason why
participants were so open may be because most schools in and around Portage are already using some sort of form
of it already.
Winnie Ferguson, who teaches science and physical education for middle year students at Austin Elementary School,
said teachers have already been doing student self and peer assessments and the workshop was a way for them to
build on what they've been doing at the school with more ideas and resources.
Ferguson said the formative assessment is an important factor in students' education.
"t helps engage them in their own learning," she observed.
Representatives from Pine Creek School Division, which includes Austin Elementary School, will take the information
garnered from the workshop back to their respective schools and decide best how to utilize the new techniques
they've learned, she said.
Formative assessment also involves having the students setting goals for themselves and tracking their own progress
on the subjects they are studying, the session presenter said.
"We have to be clear about our learning expectations from them," Erkens said, adding that formative assessment
could begin as soon as a child begins school.
She has personally seen kindergarten classes performing peer evaluation on each other's writing, she said, and can
attest to the improvement the peer assessment provides to them.
Formative assessment was originally conceived back in the 1960s, Erkens explained, but it really exploded
internationally in 1998 when a study was released that showed vast improvement to students who performed that
type of assessment over traditional classroom assessment.
Several separate studies have been done since on the subject, all pointing to the same thing, she said, that formative
assessment greatly improves students' learning.
Erkens' presentation focused on seven strategies to help teachers in the classroom with formative assessment.
Those included: providing students with a clear and understandable vision of the learning target, using examples and
models of strong and weak work, offering regular descriptive feedback, teaching students to self-assess and set
goals, designing lessons to focus on one learning target or aspect of quality at a time, teaching students how to
revise their focus on a subject and engaging students in self-reflection and letting them keep track of and share their
learning.
Pine Creek wasn't the only organization represented.
Donna Mueller, strategic initiatives learning co-ordinator with the Portage School Division, said 60 guests took in the
workshop, including representatives from the Portage la Prairie, Borderland, Prairie Rose, Prairie Spirit and Brandon
School Divisions.
"We've got Manitoba Edu-cation here, as well," Mueller said.
The provincial government has taken quite an interest in formative assessment, the strategic initiatives learning co-
ordinator said.
"t's actually a provincial initiative that school divisions look at this," she noted.
The provincial government wants school divisions to take what they learn about formative assessment back to their
respective schools to share with the staff there, much like what will happen with Austin Elementary School.
Those representatives will then meet again next year to discuss how the formative assessment affected learning in
their schools, she said.
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rswystun@cpheraldleader.com