For students, progress and achievement in literacy affects all curriculum learning. Ensuring that each student is making individual progress and achieving success is crucial to both their understanding of current schooling, and their prospects for the future. To enable us to judge how successful our teaching has been and plan for further teaching, we can use a range of assessment tools and procedures.
To guide us in the analysis and use of assessment information we can reflect on the following three questions:
The Literacy Learning Progressions, as well as the Principles, Vision and Key Competencies of The New Zealand Curriculum provide a starting point for what students are expected to know and be able to do in any particular year level. The New Zealand Curriculum exemplars for written, visual and oral language, as well as an oral language matrix of progress indicators, give another chance for you to analyse student work, and are particularly effective when shared with the students.
Progress and Consistency Tool (PaCT)
There are three frameworks: reading, writing, and mathematics. Each framework comprises seven or eight progressions which describe the different aspects of reading, writing, and mathematics that should be considered to get a comprehensive view of students’ progress. Each progression includes the significant signposts that all students are expected to move past as they develop their knowledge and skills and apply them with increasing expertise from school entry to the end of year 10.
The Learning Progression Frameworks (LPF)
The LPF is an online tool that illustrates the significant steps that students take as they develop their expertise in reading, writing, and mathematics from Years 1–10, spanning levels 1–5 of the New Zealand Curriculum (NZC).
The LPF builds on the NZC, and it underpins the Progress and Consistency Tool (PaCT) for years 1–8 (curriculum levels 1–4), creating a powerful toolbox for planning and assessing progress.
The following questions can be used when planning your next steps:
Assessment processes are more flexible and variable assessment strategies or activities that are designed to improve teaching and learning. Such processes are part of the ongoing interaction between teaching and learning. Much of the evidence gathered will be 'of the moment', with analysis and interpretation taking place in our minds as we seek to shape our actions to ensure students’ progress.
Examples include: informal observation, teacher-student conferences, using exemplars, and records of how students make meaning of information as they listen/read/view text and create meaning for others through speaking, writing, and presenting text. Student voice and reflections are also extremely valuable insights into where your students are with their learning.
For more information on assessment processes:
The Curriculum Progress Tools
These include the Learning Progression Frameworks (LPF) and the Progress and Consistency Tool (PaCT). Together, the two tools support progress in reading, writing, and mathematics.
A resource designed to help select the most appropriate assessment tool to suit a particular purpose. The selector gives information about assessment tools for every area of the curriculum, up to and including Year 10.
Assessment Resource Banks (ARBs)
These consist of curriculum-based assessment resources designed for students working at English, maths, and science curriculum levels 2 to 5, for use in New Zealand schools.
e-asTTle
e-asTTle (Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning) is an online assessment tool, developed to assess students’ achievement and progress in reading, mathematics, writing, and in pānui, pāngarau and tuhituhi. The tool has been developed primarily for the assessment of students in years 5–10, but because it tests curriculum levels 2-6 it can be used for students in lower and higher year levels.
English Exemplars
An English exemplar is a sample of authentic student work annotated to illustrate learning, achievement, and quality in relation to levels 1 to 5 of English curriculum achievement objectives (1993). The English exemplars relate to every strand of the English curriculum, to a range of achievement objectives, and to a variety of associated text forms.
PATs
Teachers used Progressive Achievement Tests (PATs) to assess listening comprehension in years 3 to 9, and to assess reading comprehension, reading vocabulary, and maths in years 4 to 9.
School Entry Assessment: School Entry Assessment (SEA) enables teachers of new entrants to gather information about their literacy and numeracy skills, as individuals and within groups, so that they can make informed decisions when planning a student’s learning programme.
Supplementary Test of Achievement in Reading:
Supplementary Test of Achievement in Reading (STAR) helps teachers to identify those needing extra help, group children by ability and needs, diagnose areas of difficulty, and evaluate programmes. It can be used to assess reading years 3 to 9.
6 Year Net (Observation Survey)
Six Year Net involves observing students who have been at school for a year to see if they are making the expected progress in literacy. It helps teachers to identify students who may need extra help and support.
Updated on: 10 Dec 2020
