ASSESSMENT INFORMATION
Informal Assessments: take place everyday in Learning Strategies. Learning Support Teachers work on strategies with students and have them complete a task to ensure that they have understood the strategy of the day.
Informal assessments refer to: oral discussions, completion of hand-outs, informal written responses, or group/partner talk.
Formal Assessments: There are two types of Level B Assessments administered at Spectrum:
1. Ktea-3: Kaufmann Test of Educational Achievement, II
2. WJ-III- Woodcock Johnson Test of Educational Achievement, Form B.
What is a Formal Assessment?
A formal assessment is where a student is assessed academically in the areas of: reading, writing, spelling, math, and vocabulary and the student's scores are then measured and compared to those standardized scores for his or her age group. With 90% accuracy, this formal assessment gives a detailed picture of where the student scores compared to his/her peers. With this data, we are able to determine if the student is within the high average, average, or below average range for each of the areas. Furthermore, we are able to depict if a student is struggling in one specific academic area or if there are several areas where the student needs more support.
Why do we do a Formal Assessment?
It is important to get as clear and honest a picture as possible of how a student is doing academically. If a student is avoiding an academic class, receiving poor grades in his/her academics, or is not able to keep up with the expectations of the class, a formal assessment can help us determine where the student needs more support.
As a Department, we are able to provide the necessary supports, such as, making adaptations to the student's academics, using alternate teaching methods or learning strategies, introducing Technology as a support, speaking to the Academic Teachers to help them better understand the student's learning profile.
Assessment and Adjudication:
Many of the students that we service in the Special Ed. Department have already had formal assessments administered in previous grades and have been given designations, such as: LD, ASD, MID, MPID, PDCH, IBI, or they did not receive a designation, however, the student is still in need of support. We do our best to accommodate the students with designations or previous assessments and make them our first priority.
For our designated students, if the assessment took place prior to grade 7, then those students will need to be re-assessed in the grade 10 school year due to upcoming Provincial exams.
This process is called adjudication. Our role is to update the previous assessment for our LD students and determine what their adaptations will be for the upcoming Provincial exams in grade 10.
Students who do not need to be Re-Assessed:
Students that do not need to be re-assessed are students who were not given a designation, students who were formally assessed in grade 7 or a higher grade level, or an LD student who has had 2 formal assessments in previous grades and the results were the same.
New Assessments:
As a Department, we work together to build student success. We collaborate our ideas when a student is struggling academically. If we can see through an informal assessment that a student would benefit from a more comprehensive assessment, we will then proceed with a Level B Assessment to determine if the student is actually weak in one or more academic area.
Once the Level B Assessment has been administered, the student will meet with the Special Ed. Teacher, their Counselor, their Learning Support Teacher/Vice-Principal, and the Parent to discuss the results. Having a meeting to discuss the results, allows the student to understand his/her learning profile and how to get help.
Some adaptations that students with Formal Assessments can access:
Informal assessments refer to: oral discussions, completion of hand-outs, informal written responses, or group/partner talk.
Formal Assessments: There are two types of Level B Assessments administered at Spectrum:
1. Ktea-3: Kaufmann Test of Educational Achievement, II
2. WJ-III- Woodcock Johnson Test of Educational Achievement, Form B.
What is a Formal Assessment?
A formal assessment is where a student is assessed academically in the areas of: reading, writing, spelling, math, and vocabulary and the student's scores are then measured and compared to those standardized scores for his or her age group. With 90% accuracy, this formal assessment gives a detailed picture of where the student scores compared to his/her peers. With this data, we are able to determine if the student is within the high average, average, or below average range for each of the areas. Furthermore, we are able to depict if a student is struggling in one specific academic area or if there are several areas where the student needs more support.
Why do we do a Formal Assessment?
It is important to get as clear and honest a picture as possible of how a student is doing academically. If a student is avoiding an academic class, receiving poor grades in his/her academics, or is not able to keep up with the expectations of the class, a formal assessment can help us determine where the student needs more support.
As a Department, we are able to provide the necessary supports, such as, making adaptations to the student's academics, using alternate teaching methods or learning strategies, introducing Technology as a support, speaking to the Academic Teachers to help them better understand the student's learning profile.
Assessment and Adjudication:
Many of the students that we service in the Special Ed. Department have already had formal assessments administered in previous grades and have been given designations, such as: LD, ASD, MID, MPID, PDCH, IBI, or they did not receive a designation, however, the student is still in need of support. We do our best to accommodate the students with designations or previous assessments and make them our first priority.
For our designated students, if the assessment took place prior to grade 7, then those students will need to be re-assessed in the grade 10 school year due to upcoming Provincial exams.
This process is called adjudication. Our role is to update the previous assessment for our LD students and determine what their adaptations will be for the upcoming Provincial exams in grade 10.
Students who do not need to be Re-Assessed:
Students that do not need to be re-assessed are students who were not given a designation, students who were formally assessed in grade 7 or a higher grade level, or an LD student who has had 2 formal assessments in previous grades and the results were the same.
New Assessments:
As a Department, we work together to build student success. We collaborate our ideas when a student is struggling academically. If we can see through an informal assessment that a student would benefit from a more comprehensive assessment, we will then proceed with a Level B Assessment to determine if the student is actually weak in one or more academic area.
Once the Level B Assessment has been administered, the student will meet with the Special Ed. Teacher, their Counselor, their Learning Support Teacher/Vice-Principal, and the Parent to discuss the results. Having a meeting to discuss the results, allows the student to understand his/her learning profile and how to get help.
Some adaptations that students with Formal Assessments can access:
- Having the Teacher paraphrase the instructions in more than one way so that the student understands what is expected of him/her.
- Advocating for him/herself now that the student understands his/her learning profile.
- Adding a Learning Strategies class to the time table so the student can access the resources, strategies, and supports provided by the Learning Support Teacher.
- Having the Learning Strategies Teacher case manage for the student so that other Academic Teachers are made aware of the student's learning profile.