Interview with the Deputy Principal at Carey Park Primary School 17/04/2018

How do you support student diversity with your assessment?

 It depends on what type of assessment it is, so ones that are diagnostic tests that are
already done, it doesn’t really cater for diversity at all. We can cater for diversity within the
support that we give. So if its ESL students we can provide support with an Education
Assistant. If it’s a cultural thing we can provide support from people from the culture, like an
Aboriginal Liaison Officer or an Aboriginal and Islander Education Officer, things like that. If
it’s something diagnostic and we don’t have much scope with the design it’s really the
support around it that to make sure all students are supported. So that’s why you do the
diagnostic assessment to begin with, to provide support where it is needed? Yes

How do you make sense of your child’s NAPLAN results?

 If were talking about when we get the NAPLAN results back and how we sue them. Well we
use them for a lot of data collection. It all goes into a shared drive on our system and the
teachers can access it when it comes to reporting. But it’s not the be all and end all to
writing reports, because we know our students and they may be having a bad day or a
traumatic week and their really off or they may have sat too close to someone and got a
really good mark. It helps to consolidate a judgement. It is used for when we’re reviewing
our schools programs so that we can tell whether a program is working or not. So if the data
for spelling comes back that we’re not doing that well, then we know that our program must
not be all that well and we might need to make whole changes. So is that how you adapt
your programs based around the NAPLAN results? Yes, at Carey Park most of the things we
do are whole-school. Teachers don’t do individual things within their class, so we all do the
same spelling programs and maths programs. The data helps us over the years to tell us
whether our programs are working or not. All the programs and the kids, everyone are
pretty much on the same level, like when they go into their cross-setting groups (reading,
maths). So I suppose individually they help with the teacher judgment abut it’s not the be all
in end all and across the school it helps us as a school. But each year level of students are
different cohorts, some are better than others, so we sort of find them important because it
gives us solid data.

How do you provide feedback to your students? Is feedback Important? Why/why not?

 Feedback is essential, it’s very, very important because if the kids don’t get any feedback
then they don’t know how they’re going. We focus on feedback being immediate, it’s a point
of needs, so over the shoulder marking and talking to them, teaching them through things.
Say it’s a writing task, there’s no point in marking their work if they’re not there, because
they’re not learning. They get their work back with red marks over it and not understanding
what is meant to be said. Choosing your focus, say capital letters. Let’s talk about this and
give them immediate feedback on what they might be doing right or wrong. Having little
conferences with your kids, sitting tem down with them talking them through, that’s the
best way for immediate feedback. So when you do the conferencing, is that bringing the
child to you at your desk or do you do it at their desk, does it matter? No it doesn’t matter,
it’s just making sure you’re engaged/engaging in these conversations.
How do you record (document) your students’ assessments? Is it important to have a strategy?
Why/why not?

 Yes, it is very important that you record their assessment. There’s a whole range of
assessment that you can record their assessment on a data base on your computer or in a
table that you make up in the back of your marks book. But it’s making sure it’s done. You
want to look at the pattern you get over time is really important. You see off days but overall
you’ll notice a pattern. So would that be a daily thing, to access and record them? Yes for
example, grammar, it might be once a week, over the course of the year. You might give
them a grade for that. SO if they’re averaging about 60% that would be a ‘C’ grade, so you
know where they’re at. But there’s all different types of recording too. Anecdotal recording
is very important and that writing it down straight away. Lots of teachers have a work pad.
They notice things about students, they’ll write them down. So is it good to have a book just
for notes? Yes, absolutely, so lots will have a behaviour book and they’ll have a double page
for each student so they can quickly flick to the page and write their anecdotal notes.
They’re really good for noticing social and emotional types of things and making sure that
it’s all recorded. So for other things too; reading anecdotal book for listening and taking
notes of student s reading once a week. Always have a focus so you can write notes about
that student or group of students on that day they are with you. So do you type this into
your computer after you’ve recorded it in your book? I have it in a book, some people
choose to type it straight up. I suppose it’s whatever works. So if I’m moving around the
classroom, it’s easier to write it on a sticky note then into my book. We have a folder on our
systems shared drive where all school assessments are recorded and all staff can access it.

What is moderation? How do you do it?

 Moderation is when you have a series of work samples. You compare them and you
moderate them against other students work samples to get a comparable grade. We do
moderation mainly for writing. We do it every term and we do it within clusters (year levels).
The clusters decide on a topic, they all do the same topic. They use a framework to compare
their personal judgement to see where their students are at and place them as an A, B, C, D
or E. Then all the teachers come back together and take a couple of writing samples and
place them where they think they should go. Everyone places their woke samples and they
all go through one by one and decide on whether they agree or disagree on where they
think the students work samples should go. So it’s coming together to look at samples of
work, regardless of everything else and based on the criteria or rubric to determine a
suitable grade.

As one of the school leaders, what is your philosophy about assessment?

 It’s an important part of the teaching and learning cycle. If you don’t assess, you don’t know
what to teach. So it’s teach, plan and assess. Your assessing drives your planning, then drives
your teaching that drives your assessment. So it’s important that it’s varied, so using
different types of assessments. You have the anecdotal, diagnostic, diagnostic is the pre-
assessment task, like the Waddington and things like that. So it’s important you use a range
of test types. Because some kids are better at certain things than others. It has to be for a
purpose, you don’t have to test for the sake of assessment. It’s part of the planning and
teaching cycle. Show how you’ve used your assessment to plan your future lessons. So to say
because of this, if they haven’t got it, so I’m going to do this, and this and re-teach a certain
area so they understand.
What effects do external national and international testing have on your school community?

 NAPLAN creates some student anxiety and anxiousness about it. Other students are ok with
it and roll up and get on with it. As a community I don’t think it has much impact on our
school community. We do our Friday testing every week and all our students are used to
sitting tests. The teachers work really well in preparing our students, but it’s not the all and
end all. Some kids are good at this and others are good at other things.

What kind of diagnostic assessment do you/ does your school implement? Why/how?

 Diagnostic so that the formal assessment. We have the Waddington, Oxford Literacy Assess,
that’s the running records we have on the computers about the year levelled readers. South
Australian Spelling assessment we do every year. We do a Science (PAT) test, we do all the
maths topic tests. We use them to get a pattern to see where our future planning lies. It’s
across the board, all teachers use that at the school? Yes, some do a different reading
assessment to get further information about their students. We use the diagnostic
assessment to review and plan across the whole school.

Thank you for taking the time to talk about assessment. It’s good that you have a range of
assessment tools to review and plan for the whole school to support your students.