Preparing students for the assessment tasks will usually involve implementing a short teaching and learning sequence to scaffold the assessment task. The descriptions of the assessment tasks include suggested pre-assessment teaching activities. This ensures students are familiar with the type of task they are going to do and the type of text they are going to produce. The steps to be taken before, during and post assessment are set out in the task sheets. Steps will usually include elements such as:
- introducing a topic, based on prompts of some kind
- eliciting and discussing students’ ideas about the topic and revising the vocabulary students need to write about the topic
- analysing text models for meaning, generic framework, language patterns and vocabulary
- jointly constructing or re-constructing text models
- building students collaborative skills as they work together on the pre-assessment activities
- ensuring students are familiar with the type of task they are going to do and the type of text they are going to produce so that they can write a different but parallel text for the actual assessment task
- explaining the assessment task
- negotiating or sharing assessment criteria, as it is important that students fully understand and can make use of the criteria to guide and reflect on their writing and to provide peer feedback during and after the writing process
- completing the assessment task
- providing a concluding activity
- involving students in assessing their own response, including building self reflective and feedback skills to help students provide effective feedback to each other.
Ensure that the time, space and resources needed for scaffolding and completing the task and providing feedback are available.
