Moderator's Newsletter - History

February, 2010

Contents

• Teacher assistance to students during internal assessment
• Optional teacher selection of samples for moderation
• Updated TKI activities
• Exemplars that demonstrate the national standard
• Stating assessment conditions
• Best Practice Workshops in 2010

Teacher assistance to students during internal assessment

Teachers are reminded that when students are working on Achievement Standards 90209, 90465 and 90654 teachers can provide some assistance and feedback to students before they have submitted their evidence for marking. The Explanatory Notes in each case define the type of assistance that is possible. Assistance should be limited to pointing out problems and leaving attempted solutions up to the student.

It would, for example, be fair to advise a student that:

• the time and management plan has not been created yet (it must be created at the beginning of the inquiry process)
• the time and management plan is not sufficiently comprehensive for Excellence (for the second achievement criterion of AS90654)
• focusing questions that have been formulated (for AS90465 or AS90654) are too 'closed' in nature, unrealistic or unlikely to lead to the finding of sufficient evidence to meet the standard
• the area of inquiry has not been defined as required (for AS90465 and AS90654) for the first achievement criterion.

Such feedback to students would help to ensure that far more students meet the standard requirements. Specifically defined milestone meetings between student and teacher during the course of the inquiry process are commonly used by teachers.

See, also, similar comments in the Clarifications section of the History resources..

Optional teacher selection of samples for moderation

Changes from September 2009 (Circular A2009/027)

• The number of samples of student work for optional teacher selected evidence has been increased. Teachers may now send up to ten samples per standard per year.
• The samples for optional evidence feedback can relate to any standard, not just the standard selected for external moderation.
• The samples can be sent at any time throughout the year (through Secondary Moderation, NZQA), not just at the time of the school submission date (directly to moderator).
• The samples do not have to be accompanied by other assessment materials unless the teacher believes they would assist the moderator in understanding their question
• There is no specific turnaround time for samples sent outside the school submission date as this will depend on moderator capacity.

Specific questions can be asked about the samples to help further define the grade boundaries and clarify issues in the assessment of that work. The feedback provided from the moderator does not form part of the official moderation report and is designed to be more developmental in nature. Teachers are encouraged to take this opportunity to engage in professional dialogue to further define the grade boundaries.

Updated TKI activities

Assessment activities that are available on the TKI website have all been updated in the last year. Teachers who use the 2009 version of these activities, either unchanged or by carefully adapting them, are finding few problems, if any, when it comes to moderation of the assessment materials.

Teachers should ensure that when downloading and using these activities that the latest version of both assessment activity and assessment schedule is used. By simply altering the date at the top of an old version of an assessment schedule teachers may be failing to take note of small changes that have been made to either the Achievement Standard or the assessment schedule itself.

Exemplars that demonstrate the national standard

A range of annotated exemplars is available from the History resources page. Further exemplars will be available soon. Teachers may find these useful in identifying the national standard for the various achievement criteria of the Achievement Standards. The exemplars have a particular focus on where the boundaries lie between the three main levels of achievement (A/M/E).

As these exemplars are in the public domain, teachers may also wish to refer students to them so that students, also, can identify the standard required for achievement. Many schools have also developed their own sets of exemplars for assessor and/or student reference. This is sound assessment practice and appears to be very helpful to students.

Stating assessment conditions

Teachers are further reminded to ensure that, when submitting materials for moderation, they include assessment conditions that were applied for the assessment of an Achievement Standard. This is frequently overlooked. This is required so that the moderator can check, for example, to ensure that appropriate assessment time has been allowed.

Best Practice Workshops 2010

Workshops for teachers, where the National Moderator is able to provide exemplars and facilitate discussion about assessment judgements at the national level, will continue to be offered in 2010. The timing and locations of these will be decided shortly. The details will be published in the Education Gazette and on the NZQA website.

Exemplar materials used at this year's workshops will be the same as those used at past workshops. There will, however, be more focus in 2010 on exemplars for NCEA levels 2 and 3, and much less for level 1.

Last updated: 02 March 2010