e-asTTle
This year I was introduced to the e-asTTle online learning
and assessment tool as a form of assessment to assess students’ achievement and
progress in writing. I’ve always been interested to see what e-asTTle was as I
had heard good things about it from other teachers’ who I consider to be experts in literacy and writing.
The main drawback I was concerned about is that I had read on
an online teaching site that many teachers found that it took a long time to
mark, and there also seemed to be frequent problems with entering data and information
being lost and frozen.
Our school has administered the e-asTTle assessments twice,
once in Term 1 as a test run and then in Term 2 as an assessment to be formally
entered. I can appreciate the way that the e-asTTle is a measure of what students can do
independently without teacher scaffolding and support. I agree that E-asTTle is a good way of measuring student
progress over time. While we often make an OTJ based on student work, I have
often wondered to myself what about what students are actually capable of…..by themselves. I feel that this tool is
more of an accurate assessment of student’s ability and capability when determining what they can do independently.
However, I did find that it took me a while to mark. The first
time I marked a class lot I did a few at a time over a few days, then later on I wondered if my
own OTJ levelling was the same over a period of time! While the second time I
marked a class lot, I did it all in one go (and yes it did take me hours) but I still found it better than dragging it out. Also, I felt that my assessments were more
on an equal par. I also probably added to my workload by making the marking take longer as I tend to write Next
Learning Steps on the sample itself, as I find this helpful for informing my
teaching as well as when it comes to writing individual student reports. I
haven’t experienced any problems with entering data or logging in.
So while I may find it time consuming to mark, I still feel that it is a good tool to measure writing by. One aspect of our writing assessment which I don't find as beneficial is highlighting Reading and Writing progression forms per student twice a year. Not only is it time consuming, but I believe that I know the Literacy Learning Progressions enough to know if students' are working towards, at or above standard and that it adds to my workload with highlighting individual forms. Feedback from other teachers has been that my OTJ's and NLS's which I often list on the forms are what they have found to be more valuable. I like making my own judgement and not necessarily following the previous teacher's highlighting. Another good benefit of e-asTTle samples is that they are easily moderated within the team and across school levels.
I am still deciding whether I think e-asTTle results link that well with
the Writing Standards and Literacy Learning Progressions regarding curriculum
levels. However, it is good that it takes into consideration students' ideas in
writing and it does serve to highlight individual student strengths and weaknesses. The Progression sheets place a lot more emphasis on phonological spelling issues while the e-asTTle has it as one area out of a number of areas.
