Assessment is a powerful tool in education – it gives both students and teachers a representation of the learning in the classroom. Accurate assessment of student learning is central to making informed decisions about teaching practice (Churchill et al., 2011. While assessing end-of-year summative exams can be useful for course reflection, interpreting formative and lower-stakes assessments can have a massive influence on the classroom. It can highlight areas of low or high achievement, not just individually, but as a cohort. In turn, this data can be evaluate the effectiveness of teaching strategies, lessons, and engagement.

One of my practicums finished in Week 9, which allowed me to see all of my classes’ entire final projects from start to finish. This gave me significant experience seeing how students approach their final pieces over the duration of a term, as well as experience with marking summative projects. For one Year 8 class, my mentor gave me the opportunity to grade the entire class. He also completed rubrics for the entire group. We moderated the scores together and discussed d. The results were varied, but expected. My mentor had noted that he expected most students to get a C grade. He was correct in his informal diagnostic assessment. However, I felt that I had no idea how the class really did as a whole.

I compiled all of the rubrics into a table. Each column aligned with one of the five areas on the rubric (see below). I sorted the grades in descending order – with the highest achievers at the top. From there, I added colour to the graphic to aid with visualisation; I limited the colours to four to add to ease of understanding (Healey, 1996). From there, I analysed the data. I found the mean score of each individual aspect of the rubric, and the overall mean grade.

I found that the students overall scored lower on their brainstorm and their preliminary drawings. This made it difficult for students to achieve later in the project because they did not have enough foundational learning. I found this result surprising – I considered the brainstorm the least challenging element of the assessment. Upon talking to a few students in other classes, some made comments inferring that brainstorms were a ‘waste of time’. In my teaching practice, I will ensure place a focus on preliminary work, and explain its relevance to the summative assessment, which in turn may increase engagement with the tasks (McDonald, 2019). This will scaffold their learning for them, and make achievement in the final piece more accessible.