Case study of ARB use at Horowhenua College

The focus of this case study is on the use of the Assessment Resource Banks (ARBs) by staff in the English faculty at Horowhenua College.

Introducing Horowhenua College

Horowhenua College, a decile 4 school which opened in 1940, is located on the Kapiti Coast in the rural town of Levin. It currently has a roll of over 850 students and a staff of 55. Its motto is "Essayez" which means, "give of your best". Recently the college was one of three secondary school finalists in the Goodman Fielder School of the Year contest. The principal is in her first year at the school and has a clear vision of the future for the college. Her major focus is that the school is a place of learning and teaching, and that students are at the college to gain the very best results and qualifications they are capable of achieving.

Recent developments in assessment at Horowhenua College

The English staff we interviewed viewed assessment not as an end in itself, but as an important part of the larger picture of student achievement. There is clear support at the school for internal assessment over external assessment, but the principal acknowledged that at times a range of data is needed for benchmarking, assessment of a whole cohort, and to provide feedback on progress. The school has a full review of assessment practices on its "to do" schedule, with the aim of bringing a standard approach across all faculties to improve the consistency of assessment and the quality of teaching programmes.

.it's a challenging time for assessment with a lot of adjustments and expectations of teachers and students to be worked through,. with the various tools available; ARBs, NEMP, the National Exemplars Project and asTTle, there is a lot to reflect on.

The school management is committed to NCEA and report that students are performing well, and that staff and students are enjoying the flexibility that NCEA brings. The principal considered that once staff got to grips with NCEA and made the necessary adjustments, such as creating new policies and procedures, the assessment component worked really well.

Current English assessment practices

2003 saw the arrival of a new English Head of Faculty (HOF), who included issues of assessment, and the potential of the ARBs to improve assessment practices at the school, on the agenda of team meetings. The English faculty handbook at the college states that staff need to relate their teaching to national standards by using the different national assessment tools. To this end teachers use the ARBs and other assessment tools in a range of ways. Some ARB resources are integrated into teaching programmes for formative assessment and others are used in the English school-wide assessment programme. The English teachers were confident they had a good balance of formative and summative assessment.

Use of the ARBs in other curriculum areas for school-wide assessment

The layout, graphics, and images of the ARB science bank have provided the motivation for a planned review of the common tests used for the year 9 and 10 science programmes. The ARBs are not currently being used by teachers in the mathematics faculty for school-wide assessments.

School-wide English assessment and the ARBs

The English faculty has a schedule of five summative assessments planned in the year 9 and 10 programme for 2003. These are:

• Poetic writing (ARBs);
• Two close reading assessments, with a focus on reading comprehension (asTTle and the ARBs);
• Transactional writing (ARBs); and
• Prepared speeches (ARBs).

The assessments common to all classes include ARB resources, which are identified by the HOF and then embargoed, to prevent them being used as a classroom resource. Twice a year, all year 9 students complete a level 3/4 asTTle test. Some items in the asTTle tests are repeated to allow for an analysis of growth over time. The HOF finds all these assessments valuable for ability grouping, as well as class and cohort comparisons.

Use of the ARBs in individual English programmes

As well as including ARB resources in the school-wide English assessment programme, teachers in the English faculty use individual ARB resources as formative and summative assessment tasks, and as teaching resources, during the year.

The ARBs are especially useful in my year 10 learning support class of kids who need extra help with reading and writing. Fifty percent of the teaching material is from Level 3 ARB resources.

Several teachers mentioned using cloze and listening resources with students for formative assessment (See the Cloze Information Box).

The HOF uses ARB resources in his own teaching programme, and recommends the ones that he thinks work really well to the rest of the faculty. When we visited the school he was incorporating the ARB listening resources into his classroom programme. He commented that he would like to see an expansion of the number of listening resources, as he liked the "little and often" approach to assessment. His year 11 class were doing work on static images and the HOF used a number of ARB resources (e.g., VL4009, VL4050, VL4127, and VL4131) to help strengthen students' understanding of the visual language concepts necessary for NCEA assessments. An example of a resource (VL4131) is shown below.

Click on image for full size.

Some teachers use a range of ARB resources for quick pre- and post-testing as part of units of work. The prepared speech resources OL1534, OL1522, and OL1508 were used for the public speaking competition this year.

The teachers we interviewed have a range of personal ARB favourites which they integrate into their teaching programmes. One teacher uses WL3209 for the writing of Haiku and Cinquains, WL2568 for assessment of nouns and verbs, WL3602 for writing instructions, and WL2412 and WL2419 for assessment of poetic devices. One staff member uses WL3020 (a comprehension resource shown below) and described it as "a little cracker."

Click on image for full size.

Teachers encourage self assessment practices by giving students ARB marking guides so they can grade their own work and interpret the difficulty data and diagnostics to identify their next learning steps. Teachers considered that the ARB marking guides gave clear guidelines for students and for themselves.

Recording of student achievement in the English faculty

Teachers in the English faculty use a coding system for their marking to show individual student's achievement with regards to levels in the curriculum. This system incorporates the results of ARB assessments. The following is an extract from a mark book.

YEAR 9 – working towards level 4 achievement objectives. YEAR 10 – working towards level 5 achievement objectives English in the NZ Curriculum.

Staff reported that the use of this tracking sheet enabled them to develop achievement profiles for individual students, and to monitor student progress relative to the faculty's expectations and goals. The marking sheet is colour coded to facilitate quick visual checks of student performance and easy identification of areas needing improvement.

Accessing the ARBs

The English teachers vary in how frequently they access ARB resources: some access the ARBs twice a week, others two times a month, and others "only on wet weekends." Staff tend to "surf" the website, browsing for resources that match their up-coming classroom work. What was common to all the teachers interviewed was the constant search for new and challenging assessments, especially with clear links to NCEA units. Another common practice was the joining together of two resources, which assess different features of a topic, to give greater depth of assessment. A printed folder of resources is kept in the resource room for all teachers to use. Marking guides are treated in a similar way, and some are made into OHTs to assist student self or peer assessment.

Teachers keep up-to-date with new ARB material by receiving the ARB newsletter, updates from the HOF, or by "surfing" the website regularly. Search strategies use varied. Some teachers use very structured approaches, that is, searching by strands, functions, levels, and keywords.

Others preferred to "surf" or use the resource summary pages, allowing their growing understanding of the bank's structure to guide them. As one staff member reported:

With hundreds of items to look at its fun to discover something really useful by chance.

Time at school however, was an issue: all staff reported that they tend to use the ARBs at home.

Benefits of ARB use

The benefits of using the ARBs mentioned by teachers ranged from assisting in the levelling of students' work, to giving a quick snapshot of students' achievement relative to the curriculum. All teachers considered that the ARBs allowed them to save time.

The biggest single issue in my teaching is time . with the ARBs I can look up the banks quickly and often find a useful match to what is been taught.it is a magic tool.

Others mentioned that they liked the range of different types of responses required of students, and how useful the diagnostic information was in the punctuation and grammar resources. Teachers commented that the banks filled a perceived gap in providing assessment material in the field of non-fiction. The ARBs were also described as being almost "wally proof" as a first time visitor can quickly understand the search process and find appropriate resources.

Summary

The ARBs have helped teachers in the English faculty at Horowhenua College to achieve three things; firstly, to create a conversation about improvement, secondly, to provide a reliable and valid assessment tool, and lastly, to assist in clarifying learning expectations. Teachers considered that the tracking system which assisted them in the identification of trends, and the flexibility they had to use ARB resources in a range of ways, had provided them with a strong foundation to monitor and enhance student achievement as well as to improve their teaching practice.

References

Elley, W., & Croft, C. (1989). Assessing the difficulty of reading materials: The noun frequency method. Wellington: New Zealand Council for Educational Research.

Ministry of Education. (1994). English in the New Zealand curriculum. Wellington: Learning Media.

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