1. Assessment Practice in Nexus -- the unconventional way! – By Brenda
Chong (Mandarin Teacher)
My responsibilities at the school are teaching Mandarin to learners from both
primary school and secondary school. I use assessment for learning (AfL),
assessment of learning (AoL) and assessment as learning (AaL) throughout
the different stages in the process. I encourage self and peer assessment in
both the on going formative stage and also at the summative stage. The
clarity of the learning intention and transparency of success criteria are critical
to this process.
The conventional way of assessing learners in Mandarin lessons would be
reading from printed text and writing using pencil and paper. In Nexus, we
want to achieve personalized learning. Therefore, assessment got to be done
unconventionally, especially in the area of Mandarin teaching and learning.
For myself, to begin quietly, but in inspirational ways, is often the best way to
build a climate for sustained efforts that support this change in my own
assessment practice.
To be a progressive teacher, I have decided to start practicing the trends in
assessment by first reviewing all my assessment documents in the archive,
make changes step by step. The highlights of the assessment for learning,
which I think have particularly motivated and encouraged my learners are:
1. using a variety of assessment tasks and methods throughout the
course to allow equal opportunity for learners to succeed.
2. using real situation, always relate the assessment tasks with an
appropriate context.
3. using project, portfolio or performance based assessments. Assess
different skills and abilities of the students: reading, writing, speaking,
listening, presenting etc.
4. and sometimes include learners in creating assessment tasks or
planning for learning activities.
It is also worth mentioning that assessment has to be done when the learners
are ready. I have a special need learner in my class, I assess him every time I
need to know if he pay attention or if he is in good learning mood. The
assessment he has is different from the other learners, in fact, I have set
different learning intentions for him in each module. The assessment for him
would be mainly checking understanding with questions and hands on
activities. I believe teacher has a great role to play in assessment particularly
for special need learners. Teacher can either increase or decrease the
confidence level in these children towards assessment.
Besides, it is importance to link the assessment tasks to the intended learning
outcomes and to integrate into the learning activity. Assessment drives
learning. Quality online learning provides many opportunities for assessment
and a number of tools are used to assess the learners. These include
simulation exercises with automated responses (eg. Socrative, Zaption,
Language Perfect), rubrics for learners to assess their own work with
embedded comments (eg. Flubaroo), and collaborative working environment

2. where learners can give each other feedback as they work on the assessment
problem (eg. Shared google doc.).
As the intended learning in language lessons is usually to acquire procedural
knowledge, which is best assessed with performance measures. Therefore, I
also include performance measures type of assessment activities like essays
and oral presentations. The advantages of these assessments of learning are
to be used to assess transfer of skills and integration of content. Both essay
and oral presentation provide a dimension of depth and promote learner
creativity. I use it as an avenue for AoL.
As I look into Assessment as Learning (AaL), is a tool to allow students to
evaluate their thinking, to reflect about the strategies that they use, help them
to answer why did they do as they did and involves learners to examining how
have or have not achieved their goals. I become more ease in guiding
learners to set their learning intention and spell out the success criteria for
every new topic. My role is to give them the opportunity to reflect upon their
success or gaps upon finishing the topic. I find this approach is very helpful to
train my learners to be responsible for their learning. They know what they
need to achieve and they are clear how to measure their achievement.
Therefore, I can entrust them with more self assessment and peers
assessment tasks. I can give them the freedom to be inquirers of knowledge
and they will grow to become a mature person. However, AaL will not happen
straight away, it requires a process of training by modelling and providing
feedbacks to the learners. Validity of AaL relies on whether the assessment
helps learners to learn how to learn.
On top of that, I record the assessment data to my learners’ performance log
that enables me to respond to the following questions accurately.
1. Which were the outstanding performances and why?
2. What was the overall standard of achievement?
3. Were any parts of the test a) well undertaken b) poorly undertaken and
why?
4. What issues of skill, knowledge and understanding need to be revisited in
the learning session?
These records are very beneficial in the development of the learners’ future
learning. With the use of these records I will assess the progress of each of
the learners and also the progress of the class as a whole. Sharing this with
each learner and their parents as part of a learning conference helps them to
take ownership of their learning.
Throughout the years of teaching, my encounter with learners has led me to
believe that not all learners learn efficiently by the same methods and so there
is always a risk of discriminating against certain learners. In addition, not all
methods interest learners equally and no single method is better than another
for all types of content. Therefore, teachers need to be sensitive and up-to-
date with our 1. decision about purpose of assessment, 2. decision about the
method of assessment, 3. decision about assessment tasks, 4. decision

3. concerning the marking scheme, 5. decision when scoring, and 6.
interpretation of scores.
I would like to end with a quote from T.S. Eliot, "We shall not cease from
exploration and the end of all our exploration will be to arrive where we started
and know the place for the first time." I think this is a very fundamental attitude
of a true educator and a life-long learner. We have to be brave to step out
from our comfort zone and take risk to experiment the new practices.