Selecting appropriate assessment tasks
| The process of selecting appropriate assessment tasks should be undertaken collaboratively, taking into account students' backgrounds, interest and skills as well as the school's available resources.
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One of the exciting aspects of school-based assessment is the opportunities it gives to teachers to develop their own assessment tasks to suit their own teaching goals and their students' needs. It is likely that the same task would not work equally well with students of different abilities. SBA lets teachers modify tasks and design new ones that will work for them and their class - whether they prefer something more traditional or are keen to experiment with new ideas and techniques.
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 To view Dr Chris Davison talking about how students can use a range of assessment tasks. |
Grouping arrangements are a particularly important consideration. Initially it may be easiest for students and teachers to put students into friendship groupings.
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To view students talking about the value of doing group activities with friends. |
However, teachers should also experiment. Diversity can be a resource, not a problem. Having students with different levels of oral language skills in the same class can create an authentic information gap or need to communicate. Highly structured assessment tasks, including jigsaw activities which require the transfer of information, are better for such groupings than more open-ended tasks which require students to discuss or share ideas without a clear focus.
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To view teachers talking about how students chose their assessment tasks and how students were grouped. |
Three of the most popular assessment tasks amongst Hong Kong teachers and students include:
New Neighbours
- Ask students to think of an interesting character from a story/class reader that you have taught recently.
- Ask them to imagine that one of the characters in the story has moved in next door to them.
- Ask them to think about what life is like with such a neighbour.
- Hold a discussion with the students and write down what kind of information they should cover if they were asked to describe an imaginary day they spent with the new neighbour. The information may include one or more of the following:
| a) |
Name and gender of the neighbour |
| b) |
What does he/she look like? |
| c) |
How does he/she dress at home? |
| d) |
What is his/her personality? |
| e) |
How does he/she treat his/her family or people around him/her? |
| f) |
What is/are the major event(s) in the story that your character
takes part in? |
| g) |
Do you like this new neighbour? Why/ Why not? |
| h) |
How did you spend your day with this new neighbour? What did you do? |
| i) |
What did you learn from this new neighbour? |
- For homework, ask each student to write a description of an imaginary day he/she spent with "the new neighbour".
- Remind them to draw references from the book. They can't turn their new neighbour into a wonderful person, if the descriptions from the book prove otherwise.
- In the next lesson, ask students to share what they wrote in small groups.
- Ask students to nominate the most interesting presentation among their group members.
- Invite a student from each group to share their presentation with the whole class.
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Choosing a gift for a character
- Give a quick summary of the story and highlight the character you have in mind.
- Tell students that they need to think of a gift for the character to help solve his/her problems, change his/her attitudes, improve his/her life conditions, etc. Show students a short segment of the film* or read a short passage about the character.
- Divide the students into groups of 3-4. Ask each of them to think of a gift for the character and explain their choices with reference to the information they just read or viewed. Encourage students to ask for clarification, show agreement and disagreement during their discussion. Then select the best gift for the character as a group.
- Invite students from each group to describe their gift and explain their choice. On the day of the performance, students can conduct peer evaluations using the guidelines and evaluation form provided with the task description.
- On the day of the performance, students can conduct peer evaluations using the guidelines and evaluation form provided with the task description.
*Please refer to the appendix of the recommended texts "Notes on copyright and end-user agreement". |
A book/film promotion
- Tell students that they have to prepare a book/film promotion for a book/film they have read/viewed recently. The length of the promotion (at least 2 -3 minutes) will depend on the proficiency levels of the students.
- Distribute the hand-out and discuss it with the students.
- Remind students that it is important to have good eye contact, posture, voice, diction, body language, intonation, etc. when they are speaking to a group of people. Show them sample presentations if possible.
- On the day of the performance, students can conduct peer evaluations using the guidelines and evaluation form as reference.
- A brief Q&A session may be held after each presentation.
- Hold a class discussion on how to improve presentation skills and how to prepare for the SBA assessment.
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To view Mr Stephen Perras and Miss Cecilia Chan describing their assessment activities. |
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To view Mr John Wyse describing the assessment activities he did with his students on a film called Bend it like Beckham. |
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