Progressions

Published: 04 Sep 2017
Audience:
Education
Parents
Schools
Topics:
Improvement
Curriculum
Teaching
Evaluation
Video
Improvement in Action Te Ahu Whakamua

Summary

“The progressions really help learn because then we can independently form our new goals and know what our next steps are.”

Students and teachers at Stonefields School describe how they use ‘learning progressions’ to build students assessment capabilities and teachers opportunities to be responsive to learner needs.

Key messages:

  • Learners can record and see learning steps as a continuum rather than a list
  • Progressions are used to make learning visible to all including parents
  • Teachers can group students and design appropriate learning in a more flexible and responsive way

Things to think about:

  • How well do our learners and their family and whānau understand their learning and next steps?

The evaluation indicators this video illustrates

  • Domain 4: Responsive curriculum, effective teaching and opportunity to learn
  • Evaluation indicator
  • Assessment for learning develops students’ assessment and learning-to-learn capabilities

This video is part of a series

This video is part of the series Improvement in Action Te Ahu Whakamua. We created this series to inspire schools with examples of success in action. These examples highlight the benefits of fulfilling the evaluation indicators we use to review schools.

Remote video URL

If I was to come up to you and see you doing this follow up, how would I know that you're doing it really well?

 

How would I know that it would be successful?

 

The progressions really help us learn independent learning, so then we can form new goals and know where our next steps are.

 

We have a Google spreadsheet. And they have a list of things for what level we're learning at and the things that you should be working on. And as we fill them out, we put in our evidence for whether we think we can do it or not. And then you'd send it to the teacher, and they'd go through your evidence make sure it's all right. And then you can say that after that you basically learned it because you use the learning process to help you make this evidence.

 

You build your knowledge, you find out what it is exactly, then you'll apply your understanding by making the evidence.

 

Our progressions are really useful in that they help us to know where our learners are at in lots of different areas, so that we can pull specific learners or they opt-in, a lot of the time, to learning intentions that are actually relevant to them at that time. If it's not relevant, then they don't need to come. If it is useful for them then they can come.

 

If I'm busy teaching something and a learner over here needs something else, they know who in the hub might be able to teach them that. And they're more than capable of going to somebody else and saying, will you teach me this thing that I need to know. Because we believe that we're all teachers and we're learners, so learners are able to teach, just as we are able to learn.

 

The progressions are a visual way to see where you're learning. I use them to help me to have a visual of what the strategy could be or what I need to do to achieve that question.

 

I think, it moves almost to a traditional textbook because it really is a learning mapped journey of where you've come from. And that's going to be incredibly heartening.

 

It's giving that validation that: yeah, I am a learner, this is what I can do. And for other learners it actually says: OK, this is what I need to do, I can go do that. I don't need to wait for you anymore. So if I had achieved a certain achievement objective or a curriculum level in reading, then it would be highlighted green by a teacher. And I would upload evidence to actually say, here's my work that I've actually done towards that. That serves a twofold purpose because it was: OK, yeah, great I can do that. But now if I go back to it in two years and I've forgot what that was, I actually got the resource there: oh, yeah, that's what that thing is.

 

Especially, fantastic in numeracy because, to be fair, we don't keep strategies in our heads all the time.

 

Thank you, Gus.

 

No problem.