Transcript:

You’re listening to The Parents of Hardworking Teens Podcast, episode 93: How assessment is decided on, written and marked AND why knowing this is super-useful when it comes to your teen completing any assessment - formal or otherwise - smoothly and successfully.

Hey VIP’s! How are you? I am good and am so pleased to have the Easter holidays here right now. 

First world problem for sure, but I had actually expected to be moving house right around now.  My husband and I have had our eye on a little complex for a while (when I say while, I’m talking years),  and a place finally came up, we were in a really good position with things, then two words - well four words - cash buyer, and buyers agent! Swooped in - swooped in I tell you  - no further offers were taken and we are back to square one. 

So, I’ve been licking my wounds a little bit there. But am gradually turning disappointment into determination to use this extra time now to get. to. work. and get Rock Solid Study making some big moves instead of us (moving). 

We have the 100th episode of the podcast coming up in May and I’ll be inviting you to get involved with shaping that soon. Plus, I have a couple of other things up my sleeve that I’m not quite ready to share yet. 

Today I’m taking you behind the curtain of assignments, essays and any other type of formal assessment. Now, to be honest, a lot of this also applies to writing exam papers, but given that there are usually multiple questions across a wider span of topics, commands and marks, there is quite a bit more to that. In fact, I’m off for a day on scrutiny panel soon for a future Y12 exam paper. These are always SUCH valuable experiences and tasks to be involved with at such an intricate level that I just love them. 
Obviously there’s little I can share directly from them, but indirectly it certainly impacts and influences the training and coaching I deliver to students.

For this episode, I’m going to focus mainly on those formal assessments that aren’t exams. It might be a research inquiry task, investigation report, a speech or presentation - maybe a TED talk or even a podcast script, it might be a book review, a narrative or persuasive writing task, or it may be a magazine article, exposition, or even a design task with an analysis or justification to go with it.

Believe it or not ALL of these tasks go through - or at least should go through the same stages in development. Especially if they are a formal part of senior assessment - an IA internal assessment or SAC - School Assessed Courswork.
And the reason I’m sharing that process with you today is not just so you can be nosy, but because if you know this information, then you can better understand how to help your teen in tackling these tasks.

I was recently helping one of our Next Level students with deciding what to do his Society and Culture Personal Interest Project on. And given that students can choose pretty much ANYTHING as their topic, he was understandably feeling a bit lost and overwhelmed by trying to choose something.

There was also pressure, as this particular assessment counts for a huge 40% of their final HSC mark for that subject and picking the right topic is a critical first step to making sure the rest of the project is smooth and successful. 

I know that a lot of times, students are told to choose a topic that interests them or that they have some experience with when they have an open choice. Now if you would like more advice on how to pick a great topic for an open task, then definitely go back and check out Episode 60 of this podcast.  There is even a free resource download that your teen can use to help them map out and strategize what that choice will be. But the idea of choosing something that has some personal interest definitely makes sense for a PIP - a Personal Interest Project, right?! 

Well, not so much, I’m afraid. Personal interest when you’re looking up or finding out about it in your own time for your own pleasure? Fine.  But assessment, that is not the criteria I would recommend starting with.

I spent the whole time working with this student, talking NOT about what issues interest them, but reverse engineering the whole discussion and decision-making process and coming at it from what the assessment is actually for - what it wants them to show and do - and why (in other words - strategically choosing a topic that will tick all of those elements AND allow them to operate at a high level within each of them. This way they’re not limiting themselves in terms of how high they can achieve in the assessment AND they’ll be making their life not EASY (these big inquiry tasks are never going to be ‘EASY’) but certainly as smooth and stress -free - AND therefore more ENJOYABLE - along the way as possible. And remember, we started out thinking that we needed to pick a topic we’d enjoy. 

When you understand what’s gone on to create the task, then you’ll have a MUCH better idea of how to successfully complete the task, even if there’s not any choice in the topic or direction.

Most students - totally understandably - me included throughout my high school, college and uni days, would simply tackle an assignment by looking at what I have to do.
I didn’t think about - what do they actually want from me and why?

For example - why am I writing a persuasive speech about, let’s say gender inequality? Is it because the teacher or assessor wants me to show that I understand the issue of gender inequality - perhaps in sport for PE or in movies for Media studies, or in Employment for Law?

OR do they want me to show my persuasive language techniques for English - and they aren’t so interested in the facts of the issue itself at all?

Do you see how different those things could be? Same task- totally different purpose. Very different angle to be taken or elements to focus on.

Consider how differently your teen would tackle this task if they knew those things - or had me sharing and breaking down the exact focus points for their exact task on a coaching call.

So, here is the first thing that happens when an assessment is developed. 
And I say this as someone who has been: a head of department who writes the assessments, a coursework moderator for exam boards, a current scrutiny panel member for senior external exams and a previous writing panel member for external final examinations.

First of all, we will look at what subject content needs to be assessed.

That means we look at the curriculum content or the course syllabus and exactly what elements need to be or could be covered or essentially tested in this assessment task.
Then we come up with ideas on what type or genre of task could do that. Sometimes there might be guidelines on what type of format it should take - like is it to be a written piece or should it be more practical - and often we will also need to take into account the length or size of a task. Not just in terms of word count, but in terms of what is required to go into it or will be part of it in order to produce the final response.

A format and type of assessment will eventually be decided upon (sometimes quickly, sometimes after a lot of debate!) and then the juicy part begins:
All the details will be put into place and mapped to exactly what syllabus dot points are being assessed. Exactly what commands are being required or used. Exactly what is going to be required by the student - what the student actually needs to produce and submit. AND are there any steps along the way that also need to be submitted either as evidence or as part of the whole process.

This goes back and forth then as each little decision is made with mapping back to the syllabus or curriculum content to ensure that everything aligns, nothing that is required to be assessed is missed but also nothing is being included or required that shouldn’t be. 
That includes only requiring reasonable personal or background knowledge. An example of this might be that in a Maths paper, say for a probability exam, students would be reasonably expected to know that there are 26 letters of the alphabet, or 6 sides on a die, or 52 cards in a deck. All additional information must be included as context, supplementary information or taken out of the task.

The wording of the task or question is then refined so that it is as clear as possible. No important information is left out or left down to presumption. And any wording is succinct rather than overly wordy or confusing. 

Then… the all important marking guide. The success criteria, mark scheme, whatever your teen’s exam board or country or state calls it. They are all the same thing. 

This is the really rigorous process of deciding what content or levels of response get what marks.

Remember, for large assessment tasks, it’s not about getting a mark for this or a mark for that. It’s about band descriptors or levels of response. And honestly these can, even to me, sometimes be worded pretty vaguely. As you can imagine, I like to make anything that I write as specific as possible, but that isn’t always the way these things work unfortunately. I’ve seen criteria that simply vary by one word at each level.
Like basic analysis of - whatever it is, to detailed analysis to Sophisticated analysis.

IF I had my way, they would be much more detailed and specific, because I know how tricky it can be to meet these sorts of descriptors when students don’t know exactly what they require in what way. Which is why a fair bit of my coaching work with students is digging into these descriptors and figuring out - what exactly does that mean or look like or include? What makes something sophisticated rather than just appropriate? What is the marker specifically looking for in order to make that decision. Because it is not just an overall feeling. Or at least it shouldn’t be.

This is why it’s critical that your teen understands what the mark scheme descriptors or success criteria actually involve and require for each and every task. What does sophisticated analysis mean for a science report compared to sophisticated analysis of a shakespeare play?

I ran a big Next Level Training Event on exactly this because I know it can feel so puzzling to people. It was called 'How to Hit the Top Criteria in Extended Responses'. I got into the worded descriptors of a variety of assessments for all different exam boards and dug into exactly what they mean and require. We used exemplar answers to see what does and doesn’t hit them and why. Because I want students to be able to figure this out for themselves. 

If your teen is a current Next Level member, they have the full recording and workbook for this in their Next Level membership. And every future Next Level member will also get access to this workshop as well.

What each descriptor actually looks like and contains and does at each level is critical to your teen feeling confident and being competent in delivering these things.

Actually, this reminds me of something else that comes into that earlier development stage. That is making the task accessible to a variety of abilities and levels. It needs to be accessible and doable by students of all abilities from an F grade to an A+ or A*. 
If it doesn’t have that span of responses able to be produced, then it needs to be tweaked or totally re-thought.

Finally, the task is critically reviewed. 

For an official exam board assessment or exam, this means going to a scrutiny panel or reviewer.  That person or small group of people will review every aspect of that in detail.

When I work on scrutiny panels we spend at least one, sometimes two days just reviewing ONE exam paper and mark scheme. 

Suggested rewording, adjustments in marks, clarity of resources provided and outcomes desired are all dissected and discussed in detail.  I’ve never seen a task or paper left as is. Including ones that I have written. That review process is so important to get outside eyes and viewpoints and have someone who isn’t IN it to see it through the eyes of the student. Just like I want your teen to see things through the eyes of the examiner or teacher marking. We as the teachers or examiners need to be able to see things through the eyes of the student.

So, what does this mean for your teen?

Well, if they consider not just what is the task asking them to do, but instead, consider how it is the vehicle to have them SHOW or DEMONSTRATE something, then they’ll be able to devise a much more strategic plan of attack. If they focus on what knowledge, understanding or skills they are proving to the marker here, not just focus on ‘what are they producing?’ - what are they showing the marker they can do -  then they’ll be more likely to include and pay most attention to things that will actually earn them marks or credit.

So, I hope that little behind the scenes is helpful. I hope it gives you and your teen a different and super-useful perspective next time they are set a new assignment and enables them to tackle and complete it with more confidence, and less stress or confusion, AND with a successful outcome.

Have a wonderful rest of your week and I’ll catch you back here next week!