Assessment Coffee Morning for Parents

We would like to thank all parents who took time out of their public holiday today to attend our Assessment Coffee Morning!

The session started with Ms. Maiya explaining how to interpret the standardised IOWA assessment data which was sent home with report cards last week for students in Grades 2-6.

After identifying and seeing some examples of different kinds of assessment (pre-assessment, formative assessment and summative assessments) we talked about the need for students to be able to answer three important questions:

• Where am I going?
• How am I doing?
• What are my next steps? 

Students from grades 4, 5 and 6 shared how they use success criteria and learning intentions in the form of the SOLO Taxonomy to help them answer these questions(see our previous post on how we use the SOLO Taxonomy here).

Ms. Maiya explains how to interpret the standardised assessment data

Grade 4 students show how the SOLO Taxonomy helped them identify their next steps in learning

Grade 5 students talk about how they progressed to more challenging learning outcomes during their States of Matter unit of inquiry

Jenny, from grade 6, shows how she used the SOLO Steps to Success to evaluate her Lab Report and identify the next steps to progress further

Here are the slides from our Assessment Coffee Morning:

Elementary Assembly

On Friday 5th February we held the first Assembly of the year that was planned and presented completely by students!  The House Captains started with their explanation of how the House Points will work and went on to explain that each house will organise one event each this year to allow everyone to compete for some points.  Each event will see a winning house, a runner up, a third and a fourth place.  4 points will be awarded to the winning house; 3 to the runner up; 2 to the third place and 1 for the fourth place house.  After the House picnic the current standings are:

Chokai - 4 points

Asama - 3 points

Iwaki - 2 points

Ontake - 1 point

The first House event will be held this Thursday 11th February and is being organised by the Asama House Captains.  Students are encouraged to wear their pyjamas and crazy hair to school (students should come to school wearing their uniforms and change into their pyjamas once here).  Points will be awarded for hair and PJs in the following categories:

• The most unique
• The most creative
• The funniest
• The most colourful 
• The cutest 

Points will also be available on the other 3 House events organised by House Captains, As well as the Elementary Sports Day. 

After our House Captains, it was Ms Ingrid's Chinese Class' turn to present and tell us all about the Chinese New Year celebrations taking place this week around the world and in Tokyo.  The girls told us the story about how the animals of the Chinese Zodiac were chosen, talked about the traditions of CNY and some characteristics of the Monkey, since we are about to enter the year of the Monkey. All ES students were then surprised when Ms Ingrid and her class handed out some jiaozi for everybody - some with hidden coins for good luck!  Gong Xi Fa Cai!