Assessment
Assessment At MAS- Kindergarten
Assessment is a process of gathering information about a child, reviewing the information, and then using the information to plan educational activities that are at a level the child can understand and is able to learn from.
Assessment is a critical part of a high-quality, early childhood program. When educators do an assessment, they observe a child to get information about what he/she knows and what he/she can do.
Observing and documenting a child’s work and performance over the course of a year allows an educator to accumulate a record of the child’s growth and development.
This assessment record is also a great tool to share with parents so they can follow their child’s progress at school, understand their child’s strengths and challenges, and plan how they can help extend the learning into their homes.
Why is assessment important?
Assessment provides educators, parents, and families with critical information about a child’s development and growth. Assessment can:
- Provide a record of growth in all developmental areas: cognitive, physical/motor, language, social-emotional, and approaches to learning.
- Identify children who may need additional support and determine if there is a need for intervention or support services.
- Help educators plan individualized instruction for a child or for a group of children that are at the same stage of development.
- Provide a common ground between educators and parents or families to use in collaborating on a strategy to support their child.
How often do we assess?
- Baseline assessment is done during the first two weeks of school so teachers can identify the students starting point.
- Some assessments such as Phonics and High Frequency Words are repetitive, an assessment occurs approximately every 6 weeks, but only assess areas the child did not master.
- Pre-assessments are done before topics/themes are taught to identify what the group already knows, the same assessment is then done after to identify what they learnt!
How are parents informed of the results?
- Parent Teacher Meetings
- Two Stars and a Wish Reports (mid-term reports)
- End of Term/Semester Report Cards (KG are currently sending report cards for Winter Break, Spring Break and Summer Vacation, however this is subject to change)
Assessment At MAS – Elementary and Middle
While there may be lots of different names for the types of assessments your child will encounter (eg, spelling tests, unseen reading comprehension, topic test, end of lesson quiz etc) they are all designed to help the teacher gauge what your child does but more importantly does not know about the topic.This will inform what the teacher does next to support your child to close those learning gaps.
For Grades 1-8 assessments at MAS are broadly categorized as being two types. Diagnostic assessments and Performance assessments.
Diagnostic Assessments/ Diagnostic Tasks | Performance Assessments/ Performance Tasks |
These are for the TEACHER to check what your child does/ does not know.
The teacher will then adapt what they teach in the next lessons to support your child in a more individualized way to make sure they make even greater progress. The score helps the teacher plan what to teach next to support or stretch your child but does not contribute significantly to their semester grade. Sometimes a diagnostic assessment will be a test or quizzes, or they are tasks that tell the teacher about your child’s level of understanding. Its important for your child to try their best but remember this is developmental and designed to show the teacher to how to help your child to improve. Neither you, nor your child, needs to become stressed about diagnostic assessments.
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These are for your child to show their best work and the scores contribute to their semester grade.
Teachers will give students and parents notice for performance assessments/ performance tasks and usually the students will have practiced what is being covered previously in a diagnostic assessment. Teachers will make it clear what skills or content will be covered by the performance assessment or performance task so students can feel prepared.
A performance assessment is a usually a test style. A performance task could be any type of work from a video presentation to an essay for the student to demonstrate their learning so far. |
We are trying to add greater variety to the types of assessments and tasks we ask of our students to provide greater interest and stimulation and to ensure that students can apply their learning to a wider range of contexts and will provide authentic student work and where possible to avoid assessment activities which are screen focused.
We hope this provides some clarity to our resourcing and some of the language around assessment please ask your child’s teacher or administration should you have any further questions about this topic.
How are parents informed of the results?
- Parent Teacher Meetings
- Through your child’s Schoology account
- End of Semester Report Cards