Part 1B: Class Assessment Strategies

The class assessment strategy was used effectively to create reliable and accurate

professional decisions during and after the FPD. Diagnostic assessment as seen in 'Part 1A-

Appendix 1' informed the planning, focusing directly on paragraphs and TEEL (Topic

Sentence, Explain, Evidence and Link) structure in persuasive writing. As persuasive writing

is a big focus for standardised testing in the NAPLAN assessments and secondary education,

the importance of writing good detailed paragraphs needed to be established. I used the

diagnostic assessment as an indicator of how much the students knew and what needed to be

developed. Rather than teaching a persuasive text on a whole, I decided to break down and

deconstruct the TEEL structure to the students. The assessment strategy of a rubric using

Excel spreadsheets enabled me to create a new template. In creation of this template, I

synthesised the Achievement Standards, Judging Standards (2017), SCSA Curriculum Codes

(SCSA, 2018) and First Steps Writing Map of Development (FSWMD, 2013) to ensure the

judgements adhered to the curriculum. To correspond with the mentor teacher, a four-point

scale was used to assess student progress with one as limited, to four which is excellent.

Using the lesson objectives and key words in the content allowed clear and precise

judgements to be made, ensuring students were marked against exactly what was taught. As

evident in Appendix 2 below, the whole 5/6 class performed at a high satisfactory level in the

TEEL paragraph lessons, with year five students averaging at 2.4 and year sixes at 2.9. Even

with the discrepancy between the year 5 and 6 achievement and judging standards, the data

still proves that the year 6's are a much stronger group than the 5's. Looking closely at all

elements of the rubric, the information gathered from this learning is that the students on a

whole scored the best on their Topic Sentences and Explain. On average in year 5, the

students scored poorly in the editing stage, due to the amount of absent lessons for the

previous lessons. Similarly, the year 6's editing was averaged the worst score, possibly due to
the lack of peer and self-reflection of editing work. Using the coding programs on Excel,

enables me to make number driven assumptions about student progress and professional

decisions for future learning.




References

Colin, T. (1964). Storm boy. Frenchs Forest, NSW: New Holland Publishers

Department of Education, WA. (2013). First steps. writing resource book. Western

Australia: Department of Education, WA.

School Curriculum and Standards Authority. (2014). K-10 outline. Retrieved

from http://k10outline.scsa.wa.edu.au/

School Curriculum and Standards Authority. (2017). Judging standards. Retrieved

from http://k10outline.scsa.wa.edu.au/