Assessing, Evaluating, and Reporting on Student Progress

Meaningful assessment informs instruction by providing information about student learning to the learner, the teacher, and the parent. Assessment occurs in authentic contexts that allow students to show evidence of learning as they make progress and create performances or products. The ultimate goal of assessment is to develop self-directed learners who regularly monitor and assess their own progress.

Assessment is an integral part of learning because it provides the ongoing feedback necessary for effective learning and teaching. This ongoing process, beginning with preteaching diagnostic assessment, provides evidence of students acquiring knowledge as well as applying their knowledge and skills in authentic inquiry. Assessment requires a variety of data-gathering methods, including observations, interviews, interim as well as end products, performances, and collections of student work. Assessment is a spiralling process that involves both learners and teachers (Bruner).

Thus, authentic assessment begins with pre-assessment and with learners knowing and helping to develop the criteria on which they will be assessed. It continues as students apply established criteria to the real world performances/products they have created. In the most sophisticated learning context, students develop assessment criteria and apply them independently to representations of their understandings, as components of overall assessment FOR/AS/OF learning. (For further information, see the Manitoba Education, Citizenship and Youth document Rethinking Classroom Assessment with Purpose in Mind.)

The Developmental Continuum for Literacy with ICT functions as both a planning tool and as assessment FOR/AS/OF learning. By observing learners as they engage in inquiry using ICT, teachers determine which behaviours students have demonstrated and those they are still working towards. This information helps teachers plan for instruction as it indicates the nature of the learning contexts that will further develop student literacy with ICT (assessment FOR learning). There are three components in assessing student literacy with ICT: observations, portfolios, and conversations.

Observations

Throughout the school year, in curricular context, teachers use the inquiry process to focus their instruction on one or more of the Big Ideas of the continuum. They focus their observations of student learning on their targeted Big Ideas to determine which descriptors most accurately describe the learning of a particular student. Then, they involve students in the assessment by collaborating with them in the creation of a profile using the student-friendly version of the continuum. This profile helps teachers and students set goals for further learning.

Portfolios

As they learn, students use portfolios to accumulate evidence of their literacy with ICT. These portfolios may be process or product portfolios, or a combination of the two. They may be paper-based or electronic such as ePearl. First, students and teachers decide on the type of portfolio they will create to demonstrate evidence of their learning; then, they engage in an ongoing process of collection, selection, reflection, evaluation, and celebration. Artifacts selected for for a portfolio may contain text, audio, video, data, and graphics, and each artifact is accompanied by a self-reflection about what it illustrates about the student's learning. The electronic portfolio ePearl encourages the process of planning, doing, and reflecting as students create work. It encourages students to:

Participate in the planning process by setting general and task goals and then choosing strategies to help reach their goals
The planning process (grades 3 to 6) (174 KB)
General goals
Setting general goals (grades 3 to 6) (174 KB)
Setting general goals (grades 7 to 12) (343 KB)
Task goals
Setting task goals (grades 3 to 6) (174 KB)
Strategies
Choosing strategies (grades 3 to 6) (334 KB)
Follow their plan while they work
Following their plan (grades 3 to 6) (174 KB)
Take time to step back and reflect as they work
Reflecting as they work (grades 3 to 6) (174 KB)
Give and get descriptive feedback
Giving descriptive feedback (grades 3 to 6) (174 KB)
Giving descriptive feedback (grades 7 to 12) (174 KB)
Giving descriptive peer feedback (grades 7 to 12) (174 KB)
Receiving descriptive feedback from peers (grades 7 to 12) (174 KB)
Reflect on the process to figure out what to do better next time
Reflecting on the process (grades 3 to 6) (174 KB)
Reflecting on the portfolio (grades 3 to 6) (174 KB)

Conversations

Assessing student literacy with ICT involves conversations about learning destinations, criteria, descriptive feedback, and goal setting. These conversations may be self-reflective, shared between peers, shared between teacher and student, or they may be three-way student-led conferences involving parents. This last type of conversation is an integral part of communicating with parents about their child’s literacy with ICT.

Continuum Snapshots – Reference Targets

The Manitoba Education, Citizenship and Youth website Literacy with ICT Across the Curriculum includes four overlapping “snapshots” of what students who are literate with ICT might look like at various stages in their development. For example, the snapshot of the Emerging Learner highlights the descriptors and examples that apply to this stage. These specific descriptors from the continuum identify targets for students at this stage of development. Most students, by the end of Grade 3, will meet these targets. Although learners and teachers will primarily focus on the descriptors highlighted in their snapshot, they will also readily see the adjacent descriptors. Teachers will be able to use the snapshots to provide a reference for assessment OF learning for students and their parents, as well as to plan instruction for each of their students (assessment FOR learning).

Snapshot of the Emerging Learner – pre K–Grade 3
Snapshot of the Developing Learner – Grades 2–5
Snapshot of the Transitioning Learner – Grades 4–7
Snapshot of the Expanding Learner – Grades 6–adult

Individual Student Profiles

Together, teachers and students can use the continuum to develop individual student profiles of literacy with ICT by indicating the descriptors that apply to any specific student. These profiles differ from the snapshots, in that individual students may have demonstrated some behaviours beyond the expectations of their snapshot, but may have not yet shown other behaviours that are also part of that snapshot. The individual student profiles indicate the ways in which individual students have developed deep understanding and extended their learning; the profiles also identify other aspects of individual students’ literacy with ICT that they need to develop (assessment FOR learning).

Students can use a friendly language version of the continuum for self-assessment (assessment AS learning). By selecting evidence of their learning, they determine for themselves which behaviours they are already able to demonstrate and which ones they still need to develop. As parents view evidence of their child’s learning, and if they are interested in doing so, they may also view this friendly language version of the continuum to acknowledge and celebrate, with all involved, their child’s literacy with ICT, and to collaboratively set goals to extend their child’s learning.

Curricular Context

Many descriptors on the continuum are connected to specific curricular outcomes (see the online version of the continuum). This means that students and teachers can address and assess curricular outcomes and continuum descriptors at the same time so that literacy with ICT becomes infused with curricular outcomes across the curriculum. As curricular outcomes are grouped into learning sequences, so too are the continuum descriptors. Together, they become learning experiences designed to assist students and teachers in using the continuum as a planning tool for learning, teaching, and assessing. (See sample learning experiences from Kindergarten to Grade 8 in each of English language arts, mathematics, science, and social studies.)

Evaluating and Reporting

Evaluation and reporting are directly connected to assessment of literacy with ICT. While assessing means systematically gathering evidence of student learning over time, and evaluating means interpreting the assessment information using professional judgement, reporting means synthesizing and communicating student progress and achievement to all concerned.

Assessment of literacy with ICT occurs in curricular context through observations, conversations, and portfolios. Evaluation of literacy with ICT is based on the targets in the continuum snapshots, the development of the individual student profile, and the access to ICT infrastructure. Reporting on literacy with ICT consists of informing parents about their child's competency in three areas:

demonstrating critical thinking with ICT to plan and gather information
demonstrating creative thinking with ICT to produce and communicate information
demonstrating responsibility and ethics with ICT