Bronny Flint
View comments from Bronny Flint, Literacy Mentor at Community Colleges NZ, taken at the Symposium in Hamilton, July 2011.
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Key content
Priming learners to take assessments using the Assessment Tool, giving feedback, and using results to inform teaching practice
Transcript
In the community colleges we’ve been using the national assessment tool since the beginning of last year, since it was introduced in the trial year. And we’ve learned that the most important thing is the feedback. To come back to the student, sit down with them, go through the assessment – what their result has been, what they’ve felt about doing it and what they’ve learned from it. And from there look at the things that they would like to progress in because all of them actually do want to succeed.
If it’s introduced well to them they’ll go in with a really positive attitude. If it has not, if it’s just been said, "We’re going to do a test to find out what you’re like", we’ve lost them immediately. We have to be really careful about how often we use the tool because that can be quite demotivating, and they start to say, "Here we go again, I can’t be bothered, don’t want to do it" – and so we lose them. So there has to be a lot of good preparation for the first time they do it, and then continual re-prep as you go in to do it again for the second or third time.
The role then is that you must work and find out the things you can best teach in your course, and follow that up – and follow that with the student themselves as well.
It’s changed my practice a great deal because I have to re-look at the material I’m using and think, "Now what can I get from the best value out of this in terms of the trade or vocation course that they’re doing as well as the literacy and numeracy?". And my job as a mentor with other tutors is to try to get them to look at their material with different eyes really, different viewpoint.