Curriculum and assessment

The launch of The New Zealand Curriculum for English-medium Teaching and Learning in Years 1–13 (2007) provides the opportunity for us to reflect on the way in which we design and deliver learning for the future. The new document actively supports the development of a school curriculum and provides the opportunity to think about personalising learning to meet individual and community needs.

In the last edition of Assessment News (Part 1 of this “quick guide”), we looked at how measurement error limits the precision of test scores. In this edition of Assessment News we examine how another source of error—sampling error—affects how we can use test results for a group. For example, we need to consider sampling error if we want to use the test results to make judgements about the general effectiveness of the teaching and learning programme the group was involved in.
 

In this article, Yvonne, a junior school teacher, describes how she decided to explore how key competencies could be integrated into the daily programme, and assessed, without creating extra workload for teachers. The article outlines how, with support from Keryn and Sue, Yvonne developed a way in which she could document the learning of key competencies and the learning of the subject-related learning areas at the same time. She recognises that the two go together like "clasped hands with the fingers entwined", and this leads her to "split-screen" pedagogy and analysis of the learning.