Assessment and Reporting

Parents and guardians are provided with information about student learning and progress in a variety of ways throughout the school year. This may include:

  • PowerSchool Parent Portal
  • Phone calls or notes from teachers
  • Student portfolios
  • Parent-teacher interviews/conferences
  • Student-led conferences
  • Student self-assessments
  • Parent feedback forms
  • Progress reports
  • Report cards

Assessment Glossary

Assessment
Process of collecting information on student achievement and performance that includes a variety of assessment tasks designed to monitor and improve student learning.

Assessment for Learning
Assessment experiences that result in an ongoing exchange of information between students and teachers about student progress toward clearly specified learner outcomes (also called diagnostic and formative assessment; refers to information not used for grading purposes)


Assessment of Learning


Assessment experiences designed to collect information about learning to make judgments about student performance and achievement at the end of a period of instruction to be shared with those outside classrooms (also called summative assessment; refers to performance data compiled as a grade)

Checklist
A two-point evaluation tool that indicates if a student has achieved a learner outcome [yes or not yet]

Criteria
What students need to do to show they have achieved the learner outcomes (e.g. compare and contrast, explain, analyze)

Descriptive Feedback
Part of an ongoing, specific and constructive conversation about learning that relates directly to the learner outcomes

Evaluation
Making decisions about the quality, value or worth of a response for the purpose of providing descriptive feedback (formative) and marks (summative)

Grade (mark)
A letter, number or comment reported at the end of a period of time as a summary statement of student performance based on a variety of summative assessments 

Grading
A process to determine a student’s performance level Learner Outcomes

What we expect students to learn; the provincially mandated knowledge, skills and attitudes we expect students to demonstrate

Peer-Coaching

One student considering the quality of another’s work and providing feedback by applying criteria to help improve performance; requires a non-threatening and supportive relationship between the peers (also referred to in the literature as peer-assessment, peer-evaluation, peer- tutoring, or peer-editing)

Performance Level

How well a student demonstrates grade level learner outcomes represented by a grade (mark) 

Performance Assessment

A meaningful, real-life task that enables students to demonstrate what they know and can do in situations like those they will encounter outside the classroom as well as in situations that simulate how people do their work

Rating Scale

An evaluation tool of three or more points that illustrates how frequently, consistently or independently a student demonstrates a learner outcome

Rubric

A fixed measurement scale and list of criteria that describe the quality of products or performances used to evaluate a student’s performance

Self-Reflection

Considering the quality of one’s own work by applying criteria; requires that a student feels safe enough to be honest in making objective observations about the work (also referred to in the literature as self-assessment or self-evaluation)

Triangulation of Evidence

Describes how evidence accumulated from three main sources, over a period of time is considered collectively to ensure validity and reliability of assessment. (For example: observations from anecdotal records and checklists, reports from self-assessments and conferences, and evidence from the products of students’ work are combined to inform judgments about students’ achievement of learning outcomes).

Triangulate

To consider assessment information from observations, products and conversations to determine how well students learned what they need to know and be able to do for a grade level or course.

Validity

An assessment method is valid if it measures student achievement of the learning outcomes that the assessment was intended to measure. It also means that an overall judgment of student achievement is based on a representative and varied body of assessment information.

 

Academic Integrity

For assessment to be meaningful for both the student and teacher, students are expected to engage in the highest level of honesty in their work and submit work that accurately reflects their knowledge and understanding of the curriculum. There will be non-academic consequences for work that lacks academic integrity. This includes plagiarism, fabrication, cheating, sabotage, and impersonation.