My Inquiry - My story so far.

Alternative Assessments for Students with Additional needs.

As part of my on going Inquiry into appropriate assessment tools to use with students who have additional needs I have investigated the following tools.

Literacy	Maths
Narrative assessment Expanded English Framework (Fuel and Launch) -         Listening , reading,  viewing framework -         Speaking, writing, viewing framework Developmental Writing scale Developmental Spelling  Assessment	Narrative assessment Extended Number framework and matrix (Fuel and Launch) Bracken - School Readiness  (cost to purchase or may be available RTLB)

I have tried these assessments with a range of students at Sommerville special school and several students within the Manaiakalani schools.
These assessments have given more detailed assessment information for students who can not be assessed using standardised school assessments.

Narrative assessment, Expanded Framework and Bracken - school readiness are all recognised assessment with the Ministry of Education. These assessments cater for students with very complex learning needs.

The Developmental Writing scale and Developmental Spelling assessment were recommended by 
                                   

  

Dr Sally Clendon PhD Univ North Carolina Chapel Hill

Senior Lecturer in Speech and Language Therapy, Massey University NZ.

I have found that these assessments are very informative for establishing what the  student  can do  and what their next learning steps should be.

Please feel free to contact me if you would like some more information.

Raising Student Achievement Throught Targeted Action

How do I know that the programmes , professional development are making a difference?

When making changes within a school around curriculum development , assessment and student achievement I think we need to look at four important areas:

• What do our students need, what we doing for our students?
• What do our teachers need, what are we doing to help our teachers?
• How are we supporting our Whanau to be on this learning journey with us?
• What is our assessment data telling us?

I am responsible for Literacy and Numeracy across Sommerville Special School, including arranging professional development and gathering school wide data.

I wanted to review  what actions we are taking and who was responsible for what areas. This has proved to be very insightful and allowed my to review and plan for the future. 

Alternative assessment - Bracken School Readiness Assessment

Bracken

School Readiness

Developed by early childhood experts, this readiness assessments help you evaluate early literacy, language, and academic skills to determine whether kids are on track for school success, and enable you to identify youngsters for whom early intervention may be appropriate.

I have been carrying out this assessment on a range of students who have additional needs. The RTLB service use this assessment as part of their screening criteria for High Learning Needs support for students who can not successfully complete standardised test eg JAM, Running Records etc.

I have found this assessment very useful for students with communication needs. As the resource provides visuals to use for the assessment students who have limited oral language can point to the correct answer, this allows me to assess their knowledge without restricting them due to their verbal output.

Several of our students at Sommerville use AAC Augmentative and alternative communication(AAC) as a way of communicating with others. This assessment allowed me to assess their early maths and literacy skills including alphabet, colours, concepts of size and shape etc.

With two students it allowed us to create a whole new maths programme for these students as we have a better understanding of their knowledge and what their next learning steps should be.

For two other students who are completely non verbal, they could demonstrate their knowledge through using their AAC and pointing , where other assessments have been to complex or frustration for the student.

Reflection:

I would like to take the visual principles and easy access of this assessment resource and adapt other assessments we use better meet the needs of our students.

Whanua involvement in the learning journey.

Sommerville school held an EXPO on Saturday 28th October , where we offered our families an opportunity to come along to school for an information day.

We had community organisations  run information sessions on relevant topics for our families included : Medical concerns, behaviour management , special needs funding etc.

We provided supervision and entertainment for their child ,while families/adults attended the information sessions. This was the fabulous idea of our Principal Diane Hankins. Our families are already asking about next year's Expo and offering ideas and suggestions for what they would like more information on.

I ran an hours session on how families can support the learning of their children at home.

My focus was to show families how they can get involved in fun, engaging ways that are enjoyable for everyone - adult and child.

Here is an example of some of the slides I presented.
Our parents are very keen to be involved in their child's learning, we just need to show them some ways of making it appropriate for their child in their home environment.

Maths Assessment Progressions

Maths Assessment Progressions at Sommerville.

The Sommerville Maths curriculum team have created this overview of maths assessments.
Students at Sommerville who often can not be assessment using mainstream maths assessment are assessed against P levels. This is a series of leveled progression indicators. P 1 to P 7 are below  the Emergent maths levels.
As our students reach these  P level progression indicators we move them onto Mainstream assessments eg JAM and Gloss.

Sommerville Special school uses a fabulous maths resources called Numicon. 
Numicon has an assessment system that matches this maths resource.

Numicon is a distinctive multi-sensory approach to children's mathematical learning that emphasises three key aspects of doing mathematics:

• communicating mathematically
• exploring relationships
• solving problems in everyday life experiences (generalising)

Alternative assessment for students with additional needs

Assessment in the classroom

It is necessary for New Zealand schools to design and shape assessment in our classrooms so that teaching and learning is meaningful and meets the needs of their particular communities of students?

Are you aware of this assessment for students who need  additional  support?

The frameworks, or matrices, expand and enhance Level One of the New Zealand Curriculum in literacy and numeracy, following national matrices and leading directly into Level One. Holistic learning progressions are set on a continuum, identifying the fine-grained progressions that some students make.

The matrices were developed to help teachers identify the key features of learning, achievement, and quality in relation to each achievement objective. Teachers are able to use the matrices to place each student on an individual starting point, identify next step planning and teaching and hold suitably high and realistic expectations for achievement.

Primary school maths association seminar - Lots to think about !!

Keynote: "Making big mathematical ideas accessible to all learners" (Shelley Dole)

Big mathematics ideas take time to develop. Helping children develop meaningful mathematics knowledge requires rich learning experiences that actively engage them in thinking and reasoning. Educational psychologist Jerome Bruner (1915-2016) theorised that any learner at any age is capable of learning any material so long as it is packaged and delivered in an organised way. Bruner also suggested that structuring learning experiences that progress through a sequence of enactive (doing) to iconic (physical/diagrammatic) to symbolic representation supports connected knowledge and understanding. Both these ideas have major implications for designing mathematics instruction. Drawing on these notions, examples of classroom activities that immerse learners in the big ideas of mathematics despite their starting level knowledge, are presented. All activities are designed to promote and build reasoning, a big idea that threads throughout the school mathematics curriculum.

Mathematics for students with complex learning needs

Les Staves www.veryspecialmaths.co.uk  talks about the importance of students understanding maths language and concepts.
To help our students develop ideas around number knowledge they require sensory experiences, skills and memory and opportunity in the following areas:

Kinaesthetic

Spatial

Tactile

Visual

Auditory

Sequential

Perceptual