2 May 2025

Here's hoping you all had a breath of fresh air over the break and are prepped up for a busy term ahead!

Over the holidays the teachers had their heads and hearts right into progress report writing. This is quite a process and it's that balance between old news and robust news! Assessment information is collected on a daily, lesson by lesson basis. We call this formative assessment and it shows up in many ways. Informal and more formal testing happens continuously otherwise teachers wouldn't know where to focus their teaching. It may take the form of an individual pre-test to see where gaps lie or a collaborative task to gain insight into who is contributing what... it may be in the form of a writing sample, a running record of reading, a simple phonics exercise, a spelling session, a self or peer assessment... 'it' comes in many forms and guises!

What good formative assessment must be is a process and not an event! Basically good assessment is an aspect of good teaching. It needs to provide the information that teachers can draw on to teach the curriculum and move students along in their learning. It can't be a done to. Supporting children to be receptive to feedback, open to goal setting and reflection should hopefully provide them with a healthy dose of optimism and motivation for ongoing learning. This is the aim!

There are also points in time when teachers need to pull all of the ongoing information together and make a judgement against the curriculum levels as to where children are currently sitting. This can't be done in isolation. This is the beauty of the team of teachers we have around a child. Not one perspective or vision. This is what happens more formally at progress report writing times. Judgements are completed in teams and then across the school for cross checking. Reports are drafted, edited and checked off. Data is collected and analysed across cohorts, plans are checked against annual targets... and on the cycle goes. 

You play a very important role at these progress meetings. You were there with your child and teachers to set the intentions at the goal setting meetings at the beginning of the year and this is the next formal step in the process, not a one off event. It's not just the children involved in this cycle on the hill. Our teachers videoed their teaching and feedback practice in the final weeks of Term 2 and this week have started viewing the material and analysed what they are doing well and their areas of improvement with a learning partner.

I guess this is what the notion of 'learning community' is - it's the young and older... all of us together.

Ngā mihi nui