Professional Practice
Standard 5: Assess, provide feedback & report on student learning

Evidence: A Literacy Progress Monitoring Report used to assess foundation-year students’ performance and the effectiveness of my teaching practice, during my final placement as part of the IntiaLit Foundation Program, i.e. explicit instruction in phonics, adopted for teaching fundamentals of literacy as recommended by Good to Great Schools Australia (2013, p.6). 

Because assessment is a data gathering process, it not only informs us about students’ achievements, but also highlights the effectiveness of the pedagogical strategies used (selection of content and instructional strategies) in a particular classroom context, as suggested by Hanna and Dettmer (2004, cited in Faculty Development and Instructional Design Centre NESA 2019). I therefore used progress monitoring reports to assess students’ understanding and skills in different components of literacy from reading, writing, and speaking. This report highlighted the effectiveness of my teaching practice also and areas that required additional support. For students’ achievement, it highlighted areas like ‘reading of tricky words’ and ‘writing words’ as two components requiring more attention within the next phase of learning. With this understanding, I turned my focus towards ‘reading tricky words’ and ‘writing words’ by including a range of modifications that included: encouraging students to use the ‘tricky word tree’ for writing activities; practising more reading with decodable readers suitable to their level with special attention to tricky words; using playdough for tricky word formation activities; and collaborating with parents through weekly emails for additional practice of tricky words at home. I also incorporated more contextualised writing opportunities for students, which not only provided writing practice but also used both tricky words and regular words to represent students’ feelings and thinking in relevant situations.