Wednesday, 20 Mar 2024
In a recent webinar session Marc Kralj and Jana Gabriel provided practical guidance on how to connect assessment results to classroom practice with the PAT Teaching Resources Centre.
Supporting next steps
The PAT suite, and much of ACER’s work, is underpinned by the Progressive Achievement approach which aims to help students show progress in their learning.
Many readers will be familiar with this approach of gathering evidence, supporting next steps, and tracking progress. In this session Marc explained that the focus is on that second stage ‘supporting next steps’, with the PAT Teaching Resources Centre providing a wealth of teaching activities and support materials that can help teachers meet students where they are at in their learning.
The Progressive Achievement approach
Using the PAT Teaching Resources Centre to support differentiation
The PAT Teaching Resources Centre links directly to the content of the PAT assessments and to the reporting scale.
‘All the resources are connected to a PAT assessment result or report’ Marc explained. ‘And you can navigate from assessment data to targeted differentiated resources.’
‘Students at the same age and the same year level can be learning and developing at very different rates. And I think that's really important to understand that when we think about differentiation and when we think about the entry points of our students.’
Additionally, the learning progression that is described in the PAT scale and the achievement bands is the starting point for navigating the PAT Teaching Resources Centre.
A screenshot showing the PAT Reading resources grouped by PAT Achievement bands.
Teachers can also access the Centre direct from the reports and may use resources such as the annotated questions to pinpoint the concepts where students require additional support.
Teaching activities are also organised to help teachers meet the needs of the students at different points across the classroom.
‘Referring to the PAT assessment reports, I can identify which students need help with the prerequisite skills,’ Jana explained.
‘This may be one-third of my class, and I can assign them the teaching activity on ‘interpreting feelings through behaviour’ which is one of the teaching activities ‘below the level’ for students who've not yet mastered these skills or have a gap in their learning.’
There are also related activities for those students working at the level or may require extension.
Curriculum links and coverage
Resources within the PAT Teaching Resources Centre also are linked to the Australian Curriculum and all state curricula to support teachers.
‘Developing teacher knowledge and understanding, I think this is important, because the teaching resources will also prompt you to look at curriculum,’ Marc said. ‘It'll prompt you to look at differentiation. It'll prompt you to consider if you haven't covered a particular area, and if it could be a gap.’
An example teaching activity.
‘Each activity has a clearly articulated learning intention at the top and its matched strand and achievement band and the curriculum codes for the Australian and all state curricula,’ explained Jana.
Implementing the approach and the centre
In the webinar, Jana and Marc discussed some examples of how teachers can use PAT assessment results to group students and use the PAT Teaching Resources Centre to target needs.
However, ultimately, Marc observed, it’s up to schools and teachers to decide how to best use these resources, knowing their students as they do.
‘When we talk about PAT, when we talk about the teaching resources, we produce it. But you drive it,’ Marc said.
‘In your class you're the ones who are using it with your students, who work with professional learning communities across the staff, in different faculty areas, different learning areas.’
Learn more
Watch a recording of the webinar: https://vimeo.com/918169473/c0a1591798
Or find out more about the centre and request a 30-day free trial for your school: www.acer.org/au/pat/teaching-resources-centre