Assessment Policy

International Baccalaureate 

PYP And MYP Assessment Policy

PYP (Primary Years Programme) / MYP (Middle Years Programme)

 

INTRODUCTION

This document is designed as a statement of philosophy and beliefs, and as a source of information for our community on the types and purposes of assessments used throughout St Luke School. Our assessment policy encourages all students and teachers to be active, reflective thinkers who demonstrate the IB Learner Profile attributes. 

BELIEF STATEMENTS

We believe that assessment is an ongoing process that communicates and facilitates a student’s acquisition of knowledge, understanding of concepts, and mastery of skills to the students, parents, and teachers of our school community.

We believe that the use of a variety of assessment tools most effectively addresses the individual needs and learning styles of our students, as well as best informs and guides our instruction.

We believe reflection is a vital component of assessment for both students and teachers, promoting inquiry and inviting opportunity for action. 

PHILOSOPHY OF ASSESSMENT

In keeping with the school’s assessment principles and the spirit of the IB Primary Years and Middle Years Programmes, assessment is geared toward improving, rather than simply documenting, student performance. The use of assessment to judge the effectiveness of both teaching and learning processes is essential to allow teachers and students to identify their strengths and weaknesses and the effectiveness of the program. The objectives and process of any assessment should be clearly explained to the students. Parents should be informed of their child’s learning, development, and accomplishments. 

 

GUIDING PRINCIPLES OF ASSESSMENT

  • Developmentally appropriate
  • Designed at the beginning of the unit or lesson planning stage and can be modified when necessary to meet the individual needs of students
  • Involve student participation in the design whenever possible
  • Allow for student choice whenever possible
  • Differentiated for ability and learning styles
  • Provide criteria to students that is known and understood in advance
  • Assess what students know and can do
  • Include opportunities for collaboration between students and teacher, students and their peers, and students and the community
  • Promote self and peer evaluation and reflection
  • Provide opportunities to share knowledge and skills within the school and broader community
  • Motivate students to take action 

 

TYPES OF ASSESSMENT

Pre-Assessments

  • Assess prior understanding of skills, concepts, and knowledge
  • Assess student interests to encourage and motivate inquiry
  • Assist the teacher in evaluating individual needs of students, helping to guide instruction and assessments accordingly
  • Examples: KWL charts, pre­tests, class discussions, thinking routines

Formative Assessments

  • Interweave daily learning and instruction
  • Allow teachers to make necessary adjustments to learning activities, methods, strategies, and skills
  • Provide feedback for students
  • Examples: quizzes, exit slips, student presentations, thinking routines, anecdotal notes, learning activities with a product, checklists, journals

 

Summative Assessments

  • Provide students with an opportunity to demonstrate their overall understanding of a unit’s concepts, skills, and knowledge
  • Are developed before a unit is taught
  • Address a variety of learning styles
  • Occur near the end of the teaching and learning process, giving teachers the opportunity to reevaluate the effectiveness of instruction
  • Examples: essays, models, multi­media presentations, thinking routines, real world applications, action, fifth grade exhibition, community project, lab activities

 

Reflections

  • Allow students to observe their own growth, learn from their mistakes, see how their thinking has evolved, and project possibilities for future thinking and learning
  • Provide insight to the student and teacher regarding both the process and product of learning
  • Assist in determining next steps in a process or product
  • Provide opportunities for teacher/student/peer/parent interaction
  • Examples: journaling, personal goal setting/analysis, portfolios, student ­led conferences, action

 

Standardized Tests

  • Created by outside agency
  • Test-takers receive questions from the same bank of questions
  • Scored in an objective and consistent manner
  • Large scale and comparable 
  • Currently St. Luke uses MAP (Measure of Academic Progress) and ACRE (Assessment of Children/Youth Religious Education) standardized assessments

* Standardized assessments are required by the Archdiocese and are used as a data point, for goal setting, and are diagnostic for instruction. 

 

ASSESSMENT TOOLS

Anecdotal records

  • brief written notes based on a teacher’s observation of a student

Checklists

  • lists of information, data, attributes, or elements that should be present in a student’s work or performance

Classroom observations

  • information gathered from observing students in class

Continuums

  • visual representations of developmental stages of learning that show a progression of achievement or identify where a student is within a process

Exemplars

  • samples of work that serve as a standard against which other samples are judged

Open-Ended Questions/Tasks

  • students are asked to communicate an original response; the answer might be a brief written answer, a drawing, a diagram, or a solution

Performance Assessments

  • students are required to show what they can do on authentic, real­-world tasks

Research tasks

  • require students to demonstrate media literacy and research skills, as well as synthesize multiple sources of information

 

Rubrics

  • designed by teachers with student input
  • contain specific criteria
  • provide students with assessment expectations in advance

Standardized tests

  • provide individual feedback on student growth and progress
  • provide school and Seattle Archdiocesan feedback to inform decisions regarding curriculum and instruction
  • administered three times a year to measure student growth in ­K­-8 and to set goals for future learning

Student Reflections

  • provide students an opportunity to reflect on what they have learned within the scope of a lesson, specific learning engagement, or unit of instruction

Test/Quizzes

  • provide a snapshot of students’ subject­-specific knowledge

Videos/Pictures

  • capture evidence of students’ learning process or product at a given point in time 

 

ASSESSMENTS REPORTING AND COMMUNICATION

  • Parent/teacher conferences are held two times a year in Fall and Spring. 
  • Progress reports are sent home at the midpoint of each trimester.
  • Report cards are sent home at the end of each trimester.
  • Information regarding performance on the IB Units of Inquiry and the IB Learner Profile attributes will be found on the report card by the time of authorization.
  • Results from Archdiocesan mandated standardized assessments are reported to parents in a timely manner. 
  • Informal, ongoing communication between parents and staff includes, but is not limited to: PowerSchool, daily homework folders, school and classroom webpages, classroom newsletters, the Thursday packet, school email/listservs, and social media. 

 

IN THE MYP (MIDDLE YEARS PROGRAM) THE ASSESSMENT POLICY CONTINUES BELOW

 

USING MYP CRITERIA FOR DETERMINING ACHIEVEMENT LEVELS AND COMMON PRACTICES

    • “The criteria for each subject group represent the use of knowledge, understanding and skills that must be taught. They encompass the factual, conceptual, procedural and metacognitive dimensions of knowledge.”  From “Principles into Practice”
  • MYP Criteria for All Subject Areas
  • To determine a student’s achievement level, teachers use a criterion­-related approach. This means that student performance is measured against pre­specified assessment criteria based on the aims and objectives of each subject area. It is not norm-­referenced, where students are compared to each other; nor is it criterion-­referenced, where students must master all strands of a specific criteria at lower achievement levels before they can be considered to have achieved the next level. Teachers must gather sufficient evidence from a range of assessment tasks to enable them to make a professional and informed judgement guided by criteria that are public and transparent to determine a student’s achievement level. 

COMMON PRACTICES FOR RECORDING AND REPORTING

  • By the time of authorization, MYP will be reporting using the MYP Subject Assessment Criteria at least twice per year. 
  •  Criteria from all eight required subjects will be assessed multiple times during the school year as we grow into our Unit Plan development during candidacy.
  •  Reported MYP scores are based on more than one assessment task.
  • Teachers employing standards­-based grading use MYP Criteria for all assessments during the year.
  • MYP scores are awarded according to how well the student has demonstrated mastery of the published criteria, using the subject area teacher’s professional judgment along with student evidence. By time of authorization final scores will not be determined by averaging summative performance scores over the year; using single pieces of work to determine final grades; or determining MYP grades by combining homework, classwork, and test grades.
  • Rubrics are designed by the IB and made task­-specific by the teacher (possibly collaboratively with students) as the evaluation tool for formative and summative assessments and are created before the unit is taught (and possibly modified based on student input). They provide students with the criteria before the assessment task is assigned and contain specific descriptors. Rubrics are intended to provide the learner with feedback when annotated by instructor. 

 

APPENDIX

 

Resources:

  • International Baccalaureate Programme “Standards and Practices”,  January 2014-2016
  • International Baccalaureate Organization, “Making the PYP Happen: A curriculum framework for international primary education”,  2009
  • International Baccalaureate Organization “MYP: From Principles into Practice”, 2015
  • Bloomfield Hills Schools Primary Years Programme, Bloomin Preschool, Lone Pine Elementary School, Assessment Policy 2014-15
  • Bloomfield Hills High School, Bloomfield Hills Middle School, East Hills Middle School, & West Hills Middle School “Assessment Policy”, December 2014
  • Atlanta International School, “Primary Assessment Policy”

 

Assessment in the school reflects IB assessment philosophy:

C4.1: Assessment at the school aligns with the requirements of the programme(s).

C4.2: The school communicates its assessment philosophy, policy and procedures to the school community.

C4.3: The school uses a range of strategies and tools to assess student learning

C4.4: The school provides students with feedback to inform and improve their learning.

C4.5: The school has systems for recording student progress aligned with the assessment philosophy of the programme(s).

C4.6: The school has systems for reporting student progress aligned with the assessment philosophy of the programme(s).

C4.7: The school analyses assessment data to inform teaching and learning.

C4.8: The school provides opportunities for students to participate in, and reflect on, the assessment of their work.

C4.9: The school has systems in place to ensure that all students can demonstrate a consolidation of their learning through the completion of the Primary Years Programme exhibition.