Assessment Champions: Voices from the Classroom

How has participating in the Assessment Champions Networked Learning Community influenced your professional growth as an educator, and your approach to assessment? 

Participation in the Assessment Champions (AC) Networked Learning Community (NLC) is definitely an important part of developing myself as the school’s AC. It serves as a valuable platform where ideas are exchanged, and assessment practices can be benchmarked with other schools.

As a member of my cluster’s AC NLC, I find it particularly useful when discussing how to implement the assessment of the Ministry of Education’s (MOE) Emerging 21st Century Competencies (E21CC). Since assessing these competencies varies greatly between schools, exchanging ideas and listening to suggestions helps me improve our own school’s approach. These discussions are rich and insightful, prompting me to reflect deeply on our current practices. Supported by MOE HQ officers, these sessions also give me firsthand insight into whether our assessment direction aligns with broader Ministry goals.

Since schools typically have only one AC, the NLC provides a crucial support system, reassuring us that we are not alone in our professional development. Being alongside like-minded educators creates a safe testbed for new ideas, allowing us to collaborate and explore different assessment approaches to enrich student learning.

What is one assessment practice you have seen or implemented that has made a positive difference to students’ learning and well-being? 

One assessment practice I have implemented and am currently encouraging colleagues to adopt is differentiated assessment in two classes of differing student readiness levels. An improvement in student enthusiasm and motivation has been observed using this approach. Giving students choice in how they demonstrate their understanding provides a high degree of student agency, supporting their E21CC development. This is done by providing students with a choice of either presenting their understanding of the science concept via models, recorded verbal explanation or drawings. 

Using the PERMA (Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning and Accomplishment) framework to assess effectiveness, it was observed that both classes demonstrate high levels of engagement, meaning and accomplishment. Students submit their work promptly, and the work is of high quality. High-readiness students also show greater collaboration efforts, with students voluntarily providing peer feedback when they view their peers’ work.

Beyond motivation, this approach significantly improves student well-being by boosting confidence and self-efficacy which I see as a barrier for low-progress learners. Many of my low-readiness students agree that the approach increases their confidence in understanding science concepts. In both classes, students like having a choice in how they are assessed on their understanding, while others neither like nor dislike the idea. More importantly, no students have a negative perception of differentiated assessment.

Preparing differentiated assessments requires substantial time and effort in designing multiple assessment formats and grading them. While it may not be feasible to implement this for all science concepts taught, it might be a strategic move if we can consider it for more challenging science concepts.

How has participating in the Assessment Champions Networked Learning Community influenced your assessment practices in the classroom? 

Being in the Assessment Champions (AC) Networked Learning Community (NLC) has made me more cognizant that assessment is integral to everyday teaching and learning. In the classroom, I have begun to look for opportunities to facilitate peer assessments so that students practise their evaluative judgement. I am teaching Chinese Language, so peer assessments take the form of evaluating and providing feedback to selected paragraphs of classmates’ essay, or selected classmates’ Singapore Student Learning Space (SLS) audio response during an oral practice. This often also involves feed up: showing exemplary work and highlighting the learning that is demonstrated well; feedback: students giving peer feedback to one another and also acting on the feedback to refine their current submission; and feed forward: using what they have learnt to attempt the upcoming essay or oral practice.

Obviously, making constructive exchanges happen requires dedicating more time. Will students fully understand the criteria just because I show them exemplars, with explanations? Will students know how to evaluate just because I task them to do so? Definitely not. These are moments that students need more time to navigate and struggle through.

After attending the NIE course on assessment, I often ask myself: “Will students learn to self-evaluate, if they are not given opportunities to practise it? Clearly, the answer is also no. It is through such lessons that students get the chance to ask questions like, “Zhang laoshi, this is an example, not a point, right?” and “Cher, I don’t know how to help him improve on his response to this question.” With this process, I am more able to assess and address students’ level of understanding and confidence before the next assignment. As a result, students can be more mindful and more confident when completing the next task.

Improving students’ evaluative judgement is not a bed of roses. From what I see, high progress learners gain confidence the fastest. Using the PERMA model of positive psychology to explain, this group of students displays more positive emotions, engagement and sense of achievement when they engage in self or peer assessment. This is because they can understand the exemplars and elements of quality most easily. They are also more engaged as they can apply what they learn while they practise their evaluative judgement. Things make more sense to them after they go through the self or peer assessment process.

While the lower progress learners display less confidence than their peers, they still display greater engagement and sense of meaning even as they struggle through the peer assessment process in trying to make sense of the criteria of success. I often see these students seeking help from their peers subtly, for example, commenting, “I’m not sure if I get it, but I think your example is not concrete.” Such instances may tell us that these students are not confident. But it is also a clear sign of productive struggle, which may otherwise be missed if they simply use generative AI to do the thinking.