Assessment

It’s reporting time and teachers are busy gathering information, talking to students and looking carefully at work habits and effort to provide the best possible snapshot of their students.

Assessment does not mean ‘to test’. Rather, in the context of PYP, it is a time to evaluate what the students know, understand, can do and value at different stages in their learning journey that is a continuous process. In the PYP classroom the purposes of assessment is to promote student learning, provide students information about their learning by giving feedback and designing next steps for learning.

What does assessment look like in the PYP classroom?

Assessment happens everyday and can take many forms. It may look like a teacher observing and taking notes on what the student is saying or doing. It may be a video, photo or audio recording. It may also happen in the form of a group discussion or a presentation as a result of researching an important question of interest to the students. Assessment is also when the student reflects on the learning and their success in achieving the outcome for the lesson. The goal of all of these methods of assessment is to learn more about each child in the classroom.

Some examples of assessment by teachers and reflections by students in our school are:

Assessment for learning: quotes and questions

Professor Ranald Macdonald FSEDA, FHEA

National Teaching Fellow Chair, SEDA Research Committee Associate UK