ETP425

Teaching and Learning 3

Assessment and Reporting
Year 3 Writing Sample Same Name

Assignment 1
Ellen Brown
S274328

Ellen, Brown S27328 ETP425 Assignment 1

Part A
Evaluation of work sample
Context of the student:
Id like to start this assessment by outlying the context of the piece of work Im assessing. Im
Currently doing my practicum in a year 3 class room so have aligned this assessment with the
Australian Curriculum Year 3, standards for English. The example of work I am assessing is from a
Year three creative writing class. I will make a few assumptions here about the students work that I
am marking, Assumption 1.) Students in this writing class have been asked to construct a narrative
piece of writing as a part of their assessment; the objectives and aims of the lesson have been
explained and made available to the students. Assumption 2.) I assume I was present during the
activity and was able to assess the students progress. Assumption 3.) The objective of the activity is
to see the students progress in regard to grammar, handwriting, and spelling. 4.) The student
already has a portfolio that contains initial testing against the English curriculum standards.
Choice of AusVELS:
I will be using the AusVELS curriculum documentation to assess this piece in line with the Australia
curriculum. By Using AusVELS, I will ensure correct marking that aims to provide coherent and
comprehensive standards for students work so I can be clear when reporting to parents. I will also
outline Australian Curriculum outcomes for language and literacy (AusVELS, 2014).
Assessment:
I will aim this assessment to be included in the student portfolio. tTo be used as evidence showing
the students learning. The assessment will be judged so I can ascertain what has been learnt, where
the student needs to go, and how best to engage the student in the future (Teachers guide to
assessment, 2011).
This assessment piece will be used as a formative assessment that will provide summative evidence
for reporting, with AusVELS assessment will be fair enabling all students to demonstrate their
learning achievements. The student will be given an overall mark to be kept for handy reference of
the students progress in the future (AusVELS, 2014).
AusVELS guidelines used for assessment:

Understand that paragraphs are a key organisational feature of written texts (ACELA1479)
Understand that a clause is a unit of grammar usually containing a subject and a verb and
that these need to be in agreement (ACELA1481)
Understand that verbs represent different processes (doing, thinking, saying, and relating)
and that these processes are anchored in time through tense (ACELA1482)
Plan, draft and publish imaginative, informative and persuasive texts demonstrating
increasing control over text structures and language features and selecting print, and
multimodal elements appropriate to the audience and purpose (ACELY1682)
Reread and edit texts for meaning, appropriate structure, grammatical choices and
punctuation (ACELY1683)

Ellen, Brown S27328 ETP425 Assignment 1

Write using joined letters that are clearly formed and consistent in size (ACELY1684)
Recognise high-frequency sight words (ACELA1486)
Understand how different types of texts vary in use of language choices, depending on their
purpose and context (for example, tense and types of sentences) (ACELA1478)

Reporting
As in line with the aims of assessment my goal is to feedback to the parents, the students level of
attainment and the progress they have made. This feedback will be used to motivate the student to
work at improvement, while acknowledging their areas of strength. Oral Feedback will be given to
the student, for the student to understand their areas of strength and work on their areas of
weakness. The oral feedback will make use of the feedback sandwich, to encourage good selfesteem and promote encouragement of the work done.
What is our task? (Outline): To write a narrative story.

Ellen, Brown S27328 ETP425 Assignment 1

Student areas of strength and areas of improvement:

What they have demonstrated well:

AusVELS ACELA1486: Use of high frequency

sight words and spell them correctly (e.g.
one, were, they etc.). The students work
shows few errors but overall has shown
great use of the above aim, and is very
close to meeting expectations to becoming
familiar with most high-frequency sight
words
AusVELS ACELA1478: The student has
worked hard to pick a narrative that is
appealing to an audience. And has used
good emotive and descriptive language,
which demonstrates the student has
become familiar at understanding the use of
a narrative.
AusVELS ACELA1482: The students story
flowed in a timely manner, and the story
was structured with verbs supporting the
current tense of the plot. Showing and
understanding of the process.
AusVELS ACELY1684: The student has tried
very hard to write neatly and eligibly with
consistent letters throughout the piece.
They also show a consistency in size, which
shows progress towards achieving this
outcome
AusVELS ACELA1481: The student has
demonstrated excellent sentence structure.
They understood that a clause is a unit of
grammar usually containing a subject and a
verb and that these need to be in
agreement throughout the entire piece of
work.

Room for improvement:

AusVELS ACELA1479: A lack of

paragraphs, demonstrates that the
student has not learnt all the key
organisational features, of story.
Paragraphs could help the student keep
their story and thoughts in order. This
would give more structure to the story.
This is an important criticism if the
work as we can now plan further
activities and strengthen the students
work from this.
AusVELS ACELY1682: The story shows
little effort at drafting or proof reading.
We can use this information to plan
more time spend on the organization of
a story and proof reading to help the
student promote their idea better in
the story and will also help eliminate
grammatical errors.
AusVELS ACELY1683: As with above if
the student edited and made a draft
they story would flow with more
structure and less spelling and
grammatical errors. This would
demonstrate their ability to reread and
edit texts for meaning, appropriate
structure, grammatical choices, and
punctuation

Information retrieved from AusVELS, 2014.

Ellen, Brown S27328 ETP425 Assignment 1

Oral feedback for the student (compliment sandwich):

What a wonderful piece of work, I can see you tried hard to plan where the story was going. I liked
how you described the candy canes frustrations at each other. I can see you have worked hard on
using the words we have learnt during the term. Maybe in the next story we can look at some of the
spelling when we read over it out loud. I think what I enjoyed most was how much effort you put
into presenting you work neatly. Great job!
Assessment Outcome:
Overall the student has done a great job, and they have met a majority of the learning outcomes set
in the task. I believed the student showed a lot of creativity in their writing. It is evident the student
has very neat handwriting and is a confident speller with the learnt words from the semester. I feel
some of the more complex words could have been corrected with a draft copy. The student has a
beginning grasp on punctuation, but could use more work in the area and help with paragraphing for
sentence structure. The student was very consistent with her understanding regarding use of tense
and the appropriate words that coincide with specific tenses, following nicely to a time frame. As
mentioned in Strengths and Weakness to further this students learning I would plan the following
activities for future lessons to ensure that when they are assessed next they can meet even more if
not all learning outcomes.
Future learning activities for creative writing could include:
As written above the story showed little effort at drafting or proof reading. We can work towards
improving this in the class with a few lessons aimed at strengthening the students writing skills
Pre creative story writing - a planning session, including brainstorming and drafting how we can
organise our story. We can also look at some writing strategies for example working with
contractions and joined writing.
After our creative writing, we can work on editing our story with proof reading.
The student is essentially on the right path. Most of the errors I feel are superficial, as written above
the story shows little effort at drafting or proof reading. To fine tune the story writing skills as a class
we can look at incorporating some of these activities into our future lesson plans.
Before writing a story We can look up some things that might improve how we write for example
working with contractions, etc. We can also look at brainstorming activities to help with the flow of
the text and how we write a story (planning) i.e. drafting and can include further practice with joined
writing.
After writing a story, we can look further at the editing and proof reading, to eliminate errors and
check our work is logical and makes sense.

Ellen, Brown S27328 ETP425 Assignment 1

ETP425- Teaching and Learning 3 Assessment and Reporting Assignment 1

Part B
Reflection Practice
Wow, on reflection of this assignment I can see why teachers are so busy. This subject has been a
great eye opener, Ive learnt the importance good assessment has in the classroom. Over this
course, I have learnt there is so much more to assessment than just getting out a red pen. This
assessment has highlighted for me the importance of assessment in the classroom.
Good assessment should facilitate learning; identify achievements; cover all of the curriculum;
encourage a variety of learning outcomes; involve teacher judgement, student self-assessment and
provide a wide range of opportunities for future learning (Brady & Kennedy, 2012).
Questions started to bubble in my mind, why am I assessing the student? What is the aim? How will
they use the information to futher theire learning? When and how am I going to carry out the
assessment? Who are the stakeholders, And so many more questions. This unit has helped me so
much to answer these questions and how best to utlise feedback, for all stakeholders.
A 2nd aspect Ive taken away from this unit is in any profession; assessment of ones performance is a
key element to professional practice. As a beginning teacher, there is a steep learning curve in the
first few years. With this in mind self-reflection is something Ive picked up on as essential for
monitoring your progress and a key aspect in meeting the teaching standards (Brady & Kennedy,
2012)..
Through the reading and learnings of this unit, Ive be able to quash my early fears. This assignment
helped me enormously, by using the AusVELS, I was able to see clearly the standard the student
should be achieving or progressing towards. The AusVELS was simple to use and comprehensive with
their achievement standards and made it easy for me to plan out my feedback and where to move
forward. AusVELS was great as it incorporates the Australian Curriculum.

Ellen, Brown S27328 ETP425 Assignment 1

Questions to pose on my prctial placment:

I struggled at first, with using the national curriculum for marking. The main issue that arose for me
was with formal assessments and how can I be sure the student has met the learning outcomes for
there year level? From my limited amount of practical time so far I can see that often children can
be at many different stages of learning all in the same year level. What I struggled with is how do I
assess this? How do I know the student has met the requirements, and they wont fall behind? I
worried without good assessment the student could fall behind and find it very difficult to catch up.
My last thought Id like to finish with is how best to give praise? In my current profession, praise is
very important in getting clients to excel. It is given without constraint and in over abundance.
Through the readings of Brady and Kennedy; Ive found that praise in assessment must be thought
about, planned and delivered effectively to improve the teaching process. Learning that praise
should be constructive to help students improve their work, has put a new light on how I will deliver
praise. My readings have led me to the conclusion that this is a very important note to take away to
develop positive about their work (Burnett and Mandel, 2010).

Ellen, Brown S27328 ETP425 Assignment 1

References :
(The Australalian Curriculum, 2015)
http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/english/curriculum/f-10?layout=1
(National Assessment Program, 2010).
National Assessment Program. (n.d.). Writing: Narrative marking guide 2010. Retrieved from
National Assessment Program: http://www.nap.edu.au/verve/_resources/2010_Marking_Guide.pdf
Australians. Melbourne: Curriculum Corporation.
(AusVELS, 2014).
Ausvels.vcaa.vic.edu.au, (2014). AusVELS - Level 3. [online] Available at:
http://ausvels.vcaa.vic.edu.au/Level3.
(Bloom and Bourdon, 1980).
Bloom, R. and Bourdon, L. (1980). Types and frequencies of teachers written instructional feedback.
The Journal of Educational Research.
(Burnett and Mandel, 2010).
Burnett, P. and Mandel, V. (2010). Praise and Feedback in the Primary Classroom: Teachers and ...
(n.d.). Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ906941.pdf

Ellen, Brown S27328 ETP425 Assignment 1