Portal:Assessments/Intro

Continuous comprehensive evaluation is to help teachers help in formative assessment of children. The idea is that we can use assessments periodically to make corrections to ourselves as teachers so that we enable better learning processes. "Converting test marks to ten" and adding all those converted marks is only part of the framework. The focus is on reviewing students' work through the year and also to design processes that will allow us to observe different aspects of learning.

What I describe below may not be a solution for this year; these are just some guidelines for how we can plan for CCE.

The emphasis is on evaluating skills of learning, skills needed for the subject, conceptual understanding and problem solving. For example, some of these skills for science could be

• observation, recording (field work, lab work)
• analysis (not only numerical)
• ability to question and link concepts, build understanding (can be seen in a research based project)
• ability to present, write and draw - not the language competence but the presentation of an idea (projects, assignments, shorter unit tests)
• interest and willingness to go through the discipline of learning (submission of work, timely submission, level of detail)
• content (some students might find some areas difficult; regular feedback through shorter tests could be one way of assessing difficulties in content areas and looking for appropriate resources)

For example the CCE set of evaluation materials could include: (i) projects that the students complete that allow some component of field/ outside work (ii) assignments that encourage students to do independent study - having them solve problems and answer questions that are not necessarily to be found at the end of the textbook; these must be regularly given and should be regularly evaluated (iii) having formal experimentation classes and observing how students work in a lab setting - however this can be done only if the lab classes have been a part of the regular teaching-learning. In high school (upto class 10) the objective of working in a lab class is to learn how to work in the lab and not necessarily learn the content and how to work in a lab is a skill that must be taught separately! [a few weeks ago Shashi Kumar from Bangalore Rural had made this suggestion also for assessment] (iv) participation in classroom discussions (this could be difficult in a large classroom) but can be facilitated better using ICT [example - use a video to facilitate a discussion and observe the responses/ comments and participation from the children] (v) tests (every 2 months/ quarterly, etc) (vi) Midterm and Final Examinations

These can be done by each term. The next step is to arrive at a weightage for the exam and the other components. For example, this weightage could be 60% and 40%. (In the ICSE, these other components from (i) to (v) constitute internal assessment and have weightage of 40%. Within the 40% of non-exam based assessment, how much weightage you want to give for regular homework, projects, lab etc. can be decided based on the school.)