Teachers and Educators’ Role in Assessment for Continuity of Learning – Step 2
Creating a shared commitment is an important step that early years educators and school teachers can take when creating a comprehensive and aligned assessment system to ensure continuity of learning.
STEP 2: CREATING A SHARED COMMITMENT
The theory
Early learning settings place more emphasis on observational assessments and documentation of children’s progress, while school settings are more focused on achievement or performance-based assessment.
Assessment that is attached to shared learning pathways is essential to authentic continuity of learning. This must be underpinned by a shared understanding of the strengths of different approaches to assessment and may require adaptation for professionals in both settings.
In practice
Professionals in both early learning and school contexts need to become better at using multiple assessment strategies, distinguishing between formative and summative assessments, and value observations that yield anecdotal evidence.
Example activity: Approach to gaining shared commitment
Professionals in both contexts need to become better at using multiple assessment strategies. To promote discussion and learning about alternative approaches, the following exercise may prove useful.
Further learning
To learn more about the steps early years educators and school teachers can take to create a comprehensive and aligned assessment system, download our free publication Towards Continuity of Learning: Rethinking Assessment HERE
We are in the early stages. Our prep teachers have walked through the kinder and our kinder teachers have walked through the prep and they’ve started sharing documents and planning and all that sort of stuff. I’m lucky as a Principal here that I know our two teams are really enthusiastic in maximizing continuity of learning. They are really keen to follow this wherever it goes. So we’ve got the perfect recipe. We’ve got a really good baseline and we can just build on it.
Ben McCredden, Principal, Northern Bay College, Wexford P-8 Campus