SD LISC Part 1 - Intro and why assessment matters

The transcription discusses the importance of assessment in supporting effective curriculum implementation and student growth. It highlights the use of evidence-based formative assessment strategies, such as learning intentions and success criteria, to differentiate instruction and drive improvement. The transcription emphasizes the need for a shared understanding and consistent implementation of high-impact strategies, as well as the role of school leaders in promoting professional learning. It also suggests that learning intentions and success criteria can support curriculum implementation in secondary schools, particularly during the engage phase, and improve student engagement, agency, and outcomes. School leaders are encouraged to incorporate these strategies into their school improvement plan and progress monitoring. Okay, this is part one, slides two to nine, approximately 13 minutes, includes the introduction and why assessment matters. Starting now. Welcome to the professional learning for formative assessment to support syllabus implementation. The purpose of today's workshop is to explore the use of evidence-based formative assessment strategies to enable differentiated instruction based on student needs to support effective curriculum implementation. Today you will look at the following topics, why assessment matters, learning intentions, success criteria, and you'll also reflect on your current practice, developing learning intentions and success criteria and future planning for your context. Firstly, you'll explore why assessment matters considering assessment as a key driver for improvement. Many of you will be familiar with the What Works Best document created by CC or the Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation. This document synthesises the most up-to-date research into effective teaching and learning practices and strategies that are proven to work in the classroom. The key drivers of improvement are assessment, feedback, differentiation, and the use of data. In the high school context, we all know the important and positive benefits of effective assessment. Assessment allows the opportunity to inform student growth, enabling the heavy lifting that is required to allow students to achieve in stage six and in the real world beyond school. This professional learning focuses on high-impact strategies that will help us leverage assessment for deep learning. We've chosen this for several reasons. Studies show that substantial learning gains are possible when teachers introduce a range of formative and summative assessment strategies into their classroom practice. High-impact assessment embeds collaboration, using shared criteria for analysing student work to develop consistent teacher judgement. High-quality assessment strategies support teachers to find out where students are at and decide where to next. When high-impact assessment strategies are embedded, other drivers of improvement can be implemented effectively. Assessment provides a foundation for feedback, differentiation, and the use of data. We know assessment is most powerful when it's integrated as a central component of the teaching and learning cycle. In this workshop, you will focus on the high-impact strategy of learning intentions and success criteria to support assessment. The power of learning intentions is underpinned by extensive evidence and research. Learning intentions and success criteria provide the foundation for other formative assessment strategies. Students need quality learning intentions and success criteria for explicit feedback to monitor their learning. It also provides the language to support the descriptive feedback and allows for individual goal setting. Learning intentions and success criteria provide a precise and immediate in-class tool for assessing student progress and attainment of learning outcomes. Learning intentions have the capacity to foreground the key skills, knowledge, and metalanguage within our syllabus documents to ensure that the learning is focused and relevant. We know that many teachers are implementing learning intentions and success criteria in their classrooms, but research has shown that while there might be an understanding about the usefulness of learning intentions and success criteria, there can be a lack of consistency about how it was implemented, which leads to frustration and reduced impact. This speaks to the importance of building a shared understanding and common approach to the implementation of any high-impact strategy. There is evidence which indicates that when leaders participate in and promote the professional learning across the school, it has a significantly greater impact. In the professional learning policy for teachers and school staff, this is captured in the high-impact professional learning element too, school leaders enable professional learning. In this case, if the high-impact strategy, learning intentions and success criteria is embedded across classes or the whole school, this will more likely improve practice and student outcomes. As you know, teaching and learning is cyclic. This is a constant consideration as we teach, formatively assess, and reconsider where our students are in their skills. Formative assessment is critical in explicit teaching. It allows teachers to accurately determine students' current level of understanding and decide how much guidance is required. You can start at any stage in the cycle. As teachers, we make decisions about what we want our students to learn, remembering that this will come from the syllabus as our mandatory document. This is where we can determine our learning intention and have a clear idea of what will signal success in the learning. We should then communicate that clearly so our students can respond to, what does my teacher want me to learn? We then decide how our students will learn the concept or skill and communicate that clearly so our students can answer the question, how is my teacher helping me learn? This involves us co-constructing success criteria. That success criteria should then be differentiated so all students can engage and be challenged in the learning at their point of need. We then make decisions about how we'll know when our students get there. This will enable students to clarify, how will I know when I'm there? This involves us ensuring our students understand how to review the learning intention using the co-constructed success criteria and having opportunities for self-assessment and peer assessment. Finally, as teachers we make judgements about where our students are in their learning. Students can then answer the question, where am I in regards to my learning? We can then use the language from the success criteria to provide effective feedback. Considering the importance of this key driver of improvement, the high impact strategy of learning intentions and success criteria can be used to support curriculum implementation in your school. Within the secondary context, this will continue to be an important, or be, I'm going to start this slide again. Starting again now. Considering the importance of this key driver of improvement, the high impact strategy of learning intentions and success criteria can be used to support curriculum implementation within your school. Within the secondary context, this will continue to be important over the coming years as subjects enter the engage phase of curriculum implementation, while others enter the enact and embed phases. Learning intentions and success criteria can drive both the familiarisation and implementation of syllabuses by foregrounding key knowledge, skills and understanding as central to teaching and learning. This is particularly important as new syllabuses may have new structures, content and meta-language. A new or renewed focus on learning intentions and success criteria could support curriculum implementation across subject areas and new groups. Tell them from me data from across the state indicates that student engagement reduces significantly in stage four as they move into stage five. Students need to be clear in what they are learning and why it is relevant. As such, there is a significant opportunity within the secondary context to strengthen teaching practice through the use of the high impact strategy in order to drive student agency, engagement and subsequently improved student outcomes. This is central to student success. For school leaders, you may consider the ways that this could be incorporated into your school improvement plan by aligning it to an initiative theme such as student growth and attainment or high expectations. Furthermore, developing the activity within the implementation and progress monitoring or your IPM will strengthen the success of the activity.