HOW TEACHERS & LEARNERS ASSESS
When teachers begin planning for the needs of their students they use the NZ Curriculum to guide them in what should be taught (knowledge, skills, concepts) at each curriculum level.
Each learning area has a number of Achievement Objectives that outline what should be taught, learned, and therefore what should be assessed.
Teachers break the Achievement Objectives down into smaller parts to help them teach and students to learn, they will often create a unit of learning experiences to support students to understand the different parts that need to be learned.
Assessment of learning occurs at all stages of the learning process, teachers gather evidence of students prior learning on concepts and topics so they know what to plan next. Teachers and students can assess how successful they are throughout a lesson, as well as at the end of a lesson, or an entire unit of learning.
At Saint Peter Chanel, teachers and students use Learning Intentions to define what needs to be learnt in each lesson or learning experience, they usually start with: I am learning to…
Teachers and students often co-construct the steps they need to take in order to be successful at the Learning Intention. We call these Success Criteria, they usually start with: To be successful I must remember to...followed by a small list of things students must show and do to achieve the learning intention.
By having Learning Intentions and Success Criteria everyone is very clear on what is being learnt and how students will achieve it, they will also be able to decide on what their next steps in learning could be.
At Saint Peter Chanel, we believe that students need to be active participants in their learning, having agency over it, that is the power to act. If students have agency then they would be able to voice what they are learning, how they are learning it, how they would be successful at it, and what their next steps might be. The NZ Curriculum is embeded with this idea of learner agency, particularly through its vision, values, and the Key Competencies.