Common areas of complaint include parents’ frustration that at times comments in reports appear to comprise standard phrases and lack personal reference or relevance to their child. Teachers on the other hand face the difficulty of trying to establish a fair and accurate representation of the performance and achievement of a large number of children in any number of areas.
For me personally, one of the biggest frustrations I have experienced is that all too often a report will mainly appear to be a written snapshot of the child’s existing level of performance at the end of the year, with little or no specific reference to progress or actual achievements made throughout the year. Of course I understand and accept that a teacher cannot possibly refer to all areas of work completed over a whole school year. However, I would suggest that reference to how far the child has come during the school year, and hurdles they have overcome, provides greater contextual understanding of the child’s levels of performance at the end of the year, and therefore of the work and effort involved.
As such, the following suggestions are offered as practical ideas of how online assessments can assist teachers in making year end reports more personalised and relevant to each child, and more accurately reflect their individual achievements throughout the school year.
Sample Gap Analysis:
· Download copies of analysis reports to enable key areas to be highlighted.
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· Review learning objectives highlighted as targets for improvement in online assessments completed earlier in the year.
· Examine the highlighted targets in the context of the child’s current performance in more recently completed work and online assessments, to establish specific and significant areas of improvement.
· Examine the highlighted targets and learning objectives in the context of the whole class, to establish whether or not they reflect challenges unique to the child, or common to other children.
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· Review sub levels for individual sub topics to identify overall topics where the child’s level of performance was higher or lower than in other topics. |
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· Review average sub levels from online assessments completed in the Autumn term and compare these against Spring and Summer term average sub levels.
· Use comparisons to enable identification of subjects where significant progress or lack of progress was made.
See the process in action for schools |
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