Assessment Strategies and Practices

The assessment of students’ performance can be classified according to the timing of implementation, namely short-term, medium-term and long-term assessment.

Short-term assessment strategy refers to assessment that is taken place on a daily or weekly basis to measure students’ development of knowledge, understanding and skills in individual lessons. Common short-term assessment practices include group discussion, oral presentation, class observation, oral questioning in class and feedback by marking.

Medium-term assessment strategy concerns the assessment of students’ performance in learning a unit, a topic or within a school term. It involves less frequent, more in-depth and formal assessment practices which includes quizzes, unit tests, self-assessment and peer assessment.

Long-term assessment strategy includes both summative and formative assessments that are only implemented once or twice per school year, such as term tests, half-year and final examinations, project reports and portfolios.

The following sub-sections intended to highlight a few more common assessment practices adopted by many geography teachers. They aim at providing essential reminders concerning how those assessment practices should be designed and implemented, as well as pointing out a few common errors that may be committed by teachers.

5.3.1 Effective Questioning

Questioning is an essential part of the teaching practice and the most common assessment practice adopted by teachers in classroom. Besides checking how much the students can remember of the previous teaching, carefully planned questioning can facilitate teachers to discover the learning obstacles that hinder their students from understanding the lesson, to further challenge their students to think deeper, as well as to enable their students to offer more alternative explanations or to improve the answers given. To accomplish these desirable outcomes, teachers are reminded to pay attention to the following advices:

(a) Clarify the purposes in asking questions, and ensure that they are relevant to the assessment objectives;

(b) Carefully phrase the question to ensure that it is clear to all students;

(c) Allow sufficient wait time (at least a few seconds) for students to think and formulate answers. Short wait time prevents students from taking part in the classroom discourse and confines teachers to ask simple, closed questions, resulting in very superficial classroom dialogue filled only with recall of terms and facts;

(d) Avoid simple “yes-or-no” or “choose A or B” questions. It is more appropriate to ask questions that require students to give longer, extended and thoughtful answers.

“Is raw material still an important factor in influencing industrial location in the 21st C.?”

“Why do we say that raw material is still an important factor in influencing industrial location in the 21st C.?”

“Some people said that global warming is just a long term fluctuation of world temperature. Do you agree or disagree?”

“Some people said that global warming is just a long term fluctuation of world temperature. What do you think?”

Consider using the following questions that help developing student reflection and promoting discussion.

• “What do you think of Edmond’s answer?”

• “What could we add to Mary’s answer?”

• “David said … and Susan thought … but can we bring all these ideas together?”

(e) Try to anticipate students’ possible responses when planning questions.

• What type of responses do I expect from the students — a solution or an example?

• What type of answer will I accept — student’s own expression or just wordings from the textbook?

• If students do not respond, what will I do? How should I rephrase my question? (In this case, teacher may need to modify the wordings of the question.)

• How should I follow up when the student give a correct answer?

• If student gives an incorrect answer, how should I respond?

5.3.2 Feedback by Marking

Feedbacks given by teachers in marking students’ written assignments are very helpful in improving students’ learning. When giving written feedbacks, teachers should pay attention to the followings:

(a) The feedback / comments to students about their work should be given promptly and regularly;

(b) Teachers should always give constructive feedback to help students understand what the tasks require and how to improve their future work. They should avoid giving critical comments that damage students’ self-esteem as this will be very de-motivating; and

(c) Feedback will be more effective if it is focus on the task and encourages students to think about the task. It is advisable for teachers, through their written comments, to point out the gap between the standard and students’ actual performance and to provide suggestions about the ways students can improve their work.

Figure 5.1 below is an example of a quality feedback given by a teacher to a short essay submitted by her student.

Figure 5.1 An example of quality feedback Recognise target achieved

Target for improvement

Gap to be filled Hint

Peter, you have been able to list out all the major physical factors that affect the farming characteristics in South China. But can you explain how these physical factors influence the farming characteristics? For example, is there a relationship between the hilly relief and the small farm size of South China? In addition, can you think of a better way than using words to show the interrelationship of the physical factors and the major farming characteristics in South China, say a system diagram?

5.3.3 Self-assessment

Assessment for learning involves the use of classroom assessment to improve learning.

Student’s self-assessment is one part of such formative classroom assessment. It involves students analyzing their own work and reflecting on their learning process, in particular the difficulties encountered and the outcomes achieved. It is also advisable to request student to lay down targets for further progress or improvement.

Some steps and suggestions are shown below:

(a) Teachers should give training sessions on self-assessment to their students at the beginning of a school year. During these class sessions, teachers should:

(i) clarify what is meant by self-assessment;

(ii) explain the objectives of learning clearly;

(iii) inform students that self-assessment will become part of their classroom life;

(iv) introduce self-assessment strategies to students and emphasise how these strategies can aid their learning;

(b) Teachers should invite their students to participate in the development of standards / criteria for self-assessment.

(c) Teachers should help their students to understand the criteria so that they are capable of evaluating their own work.

(d) Before doing each task, teachers should explain the learning objectives behind the task.

(e) Teachers should use the results of self-evaluation as a part of the final marks to a piece of work. Teachers should also discuss the work and its assessment with the students. These help students to understand the criteria better and in turn facilitate a smoother implementation of self-assessment in the coming lessons. Besides, new targets can be added if deemed necessary upon mutual agreement between teachers and their students after assessment.

(f) Teachers should encourage their students to have self-assessment frequently and consistently. Therefore, teachers should mark out time slots for these assessment activities.

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Figure 5.2 Example one of a learning journal

To facilitate the implementation of self-assessment, teachers can design a learning journal for students to fill in after the completion of a teaching unit. The journal can help students to conduct self-evaluation of their own learning in a systematic way. Moreover, a collection of the journals over a period of time is a very valuable evidence of the learning progress of each individual student, which provides feedback to improve teaching strategies and to understand better the learning difficulties encountered by students. Figures 5.2 and 5.3 are two examples of learning journal used in local secondary schools for teacher reference.

- A little - Some - Most - Everything

99 Figure 5.3 Example two of a learning journal

S2 Geography

Learning Journal for Unit 4 Lesson 1

Name:

Class & Class No.:

Date of Lesson:

1. I have learnt the following. (You can pick more than one)

Definition of Overpopulation Problems caused by overpopulation in China Solutions adopted by China in handling overpopulation problem

Read population pyramid Calculate dependency ratio

2. I still do not understand the following. (You can pick more than one)

Definition of Overpopulation Problems caused by overpopulation in China Solutions adopted by China in handling overpopulation problem

Read population pyramid Calculate dependency ratio

3. The following is the part that I found most difficult to understand.

4. To what extend I have understood the content of this lesson.

Very little Full understood

1 2 3 4

5. Try to draw a diagram to show all you have learnt in this lesson.

Below are two more reminders for teachers intending to practice self-assessment in class.

Firstly, the criteria for evaluating student performance must be made clear to every student such that the students know the aim of their work and how they can complete it successfully. These criteria may be a bit abstract, thus it is essential for teachers to provide concrete examples or sample scripts of previous student work to ensure thorough understanding.

Secondly, it is crucial to provide a safe and comfortable classroom atmosphere for students.

Students should be reminded that the purpose of self-assessment is NOT fault-finding, but to help them to know how far they have gone in learning and how they can proceed or improve. Under no circumstances should a student be remembered, scolded or even punished by the teacher because she/he reveals something he/she do not understand after completing the lesson, even if the reason is because she/he did not pay attention in class.

5.3.4 Written Tests and Examinations

Tests and examinations are one of the common forms of assessment practiced in secondary schools. Various types of questions have been developed to solicit evidence about student learning, with the more common types include multiple-choice question, cloze (fill-in-the-blank) question, true-false question, matching question, short question and essay question. To decide which types of questions are to be included in the test/exam paper, the prime consideration will definitely be the objective of the assessment, that is, the learning outcomes the test/exam is intended to measure. An easy way to determine the question format will be focusing on the verb in the outcome statement being addressed. For example, an outcome that requires the student to ‘recall’ or to ‘identify’ can be assessed by using cloze or multiple-choice question. When it comes to requiring the student to

‘compare’ or to ‘explain’, then essay-type question will be an appropriate format.

Figure 5.4 Question format and the required learning outcomes

Possible question format Outcomes that require student to Multiple-choice recall, define, identify, distinguish, determine,

True-false calculate, select ……

Matching

Short essay name, state, define, identify, calculate, determine, Structured question classify, describe ……

Cloze

Essay describe, explain, discuss, analyse, interpret, compare,

Report contrast, evaluate, comment ……

In preparing text/exam paper, it is important for teacher to ensure that the design is fair and can effectively reveal what the students know and are able to do. The followings are a few considerations for teachers in preparing test/exam items:

(a) Each item should focus on assessing the knowledge and skill of the students in one particular area. Students’ performance should not be unduly influenced by their knowledge and skill in another area. For instance, a data-response question which requires students to read a number of news articles before they could figure out the type of natural hazard may be wrongly testing students’ reading ability instead of their knowledge on natural hazard.

Students with relatively lower reading ability will obviously be unfairly disadvantaged in this case.

(b) The language used in the question stem should be as simple and clear as possible. Teachers should note that students may fail to answer a question correctly because they fail to understand the language of the question. Consider the following question:

Describe the adverse impacts brought by climate change on people living in low-lying coastal areas.

Changing the term ‘adverse impacts’ to ‘negative effects’ or simply ‘problems’ can reduce the difficulty of the question and avoid the possibility of students failing to answer the question simply because they did not understand the difficult language term.

(c) In designing assessment items, teachers should avoid the inclusion of unfair tricks to trap students. A common example will be the use of negatively worded multiple-choice item like “Which of the following is not a correct cause of occurrence of sandstorm in China?”

Students often miss the ‘not’ unless it is highlighted or underlined, and they will also be confused or trapped by the word ‘correct’ which is totally not necessary.

(d) In preparing test and examination papers for formal, summative assessment, a balance in the types of questions is necessary. Apart from elements of factual knowledge and skills, teachers should also pay attention to components involving understanding of principles and relationships, generalization and analysis. Teachers could develop a simple tabular form to help check the frequencies of different topics and types of questions appear in the test paper.

Figure 5.5 A checklist for setting test / examination paper

(e) Teachers are also reminded that data-response questions are particularly suitable for assessing abilities related to the interpretation and analysis of spatial information and decision-making in the study of geographical issues. It is advisable to incorporate a wide range of graphical and pictorial materials in the questions. Finally, questions which are directly copied from workbooks or textbook activities should not be used, to avoid situations in which students can score very high marks simply by rote memorisation of the answers given.

(f) Tests and examinations should not be used simply to rank students’ performance.

Summative tests/examinations can be used in a formative way. For example, students can be encouraged to reflect on their performance, note where they have done well and what they need to improve, and then develop their own revision plans for future improvement.

Another possible approach is to ask students to work collaboratively in class to re-work test/examination answers based on the criteria developed for peer assessment and self-assessment as this can help them to understand better the aims of their learning and how they can perform more effectively in the future.

Topic Total Unit 1 Sustainable City Subtopic 1

Subtopic 2 Subtopic 3

Unit 2 Natural Hazards Subtopic 1

Subtopic 2 Subtopic 3

Unit 3 Climate Change Subtopic 1

Subtopic 2 Subtopic 3

Total

Cognitive Level

Recall Comprehend Apply Analysis Evaluate Total Q. No. Mark Q. No. Mark Q. No. Mark Q. No. Mark Q. No. Mark Mark 100

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