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Anna,it is true that one can become overwhelmed with all the digital resources available to us. I have learnt that I am doing well if I can take a smaller number of new ideas away from a course such as this and actually use them regularly. We don’t have to stress if we are not putting everything into practice. The course contents are now safely stored in my digital file so I can access them when needed.( I couldn’t have done that last year, but I’m a bit more techy now!)
Yes we too have been using the YARC as a diagnostic tool. We used to correct and work out scores etc ourselves until we discovered it can be done online! What a gamechanger!!
It has been helpful to have been reminded of all of these assessment tools available to us. I find the conferencing tool invaluable. Involving the student, parents and colleagues, it helps give us a 360 picture of where the student is at.
My thoughts about School is a useful platform to get the student thinking of and talking about how they are finding school. I have used it in a variety of ways: with a more capable child, having a chat through the questions and letting them fill in their responses, alternately i scribe their responses. With some students I felt they were a bit intimidated by the formality of a sheet of paper, so in that case we just played with playdough together and I asked the questions in a chatty way, recording the answers after the class.
It can be tempting to incidentally ask a colleague how a student is progressing in class, but it is so more effective to make an appointment to meet and have a more structured conversation. I found that because the class teacher is involved with SET in creating the SSP, then it’s important to meet before each SSP meeting to do that well and assess how the SSP has been working out.
The parents know their children best of all, so it is paramount that they are involved in the assessment process. This is obviously done through SSP meetings, but can also be done in other ways. Last year in SET, I had an arrangement with a parent of a shy junior infant that we would have a copybook where each of us could fill in how the child got on at home/school that day. We both found that to be a useful tool.
