The change in 2018 to new assessment weightings and restrictions have left some teachers feeling confused about how to embed the changes. It helps to remember that the purpose behind the change was to help reduce the stress felt by our students due to over assessment.
The key changes to remember are:
- Only 3 assessment tasks in Year 11
- Only 1 formal exam eg Yearly exam
- The minimum weighting for a task is 20% and the maximum is 40%
NESA has shared some sample assessment task overviews on their website. Most teachers are keen to include a Yearly exam at 40% which leaves us with the following weightings to play with:
- Listening 20%
- Reading 20%
- Speaking 10%
- Writing 10%
This essentially means you can do two assessment tasks that need to cover more than one skill. NESA also wants teachers to design tasks that can have all parts submitted together, rather than lots of portfolio tasks. Remember, the goal is to reduce the student work load. We are aiming to use these other two tasks to assess student learning in ways that don’t just mimic the HSC exam.
So, what can you do?
You are free to use the ideas below to develop your own task or you can purchase a pre-made version from our website. These will be available from the end of January but as some of you will be designing assessment task overviews this term, I thought I would give you the heads up now.
Task A : Japanese homestay preparation
Weighting: 20% Listening & 10% writing
Overview
Context & purpose: You are Alex, a year 11 student about to go to Japan later this year. You receive a videoclip from the homestay family you are going to be hosted by. You need to work out the gist of the videoclip and specific information in order to write a letter to them in Japanese.
Process, product & audience:
There are two parts to this task.
Part A: You will view a videoclip of a person discussing images of their family and daily routine. You will be required to write answers to questions in English about the clip. This section will take approximately 15 minutes. (Teachers will need to decide whether the students have access to viewing the video as individuals, enabling them to pause or repeat sections as needed; or to view as a class and are limited to a number of viewings.)
Part B: You will be required to complete a letter in written Japanese. The beginning and end of the letter will be provided for you. You will need to imagine that you are going to visit the family that appeared in the videoclip in Part A. Provide information about yourself and highlight any details that you have in common with the family in the videoclip. Are there similarities between your family, pets or daily routine and theirs? You should aim to write 100-150ji. This does not include the letter opening and close that is provided for you.
Task B : Japanese language camp
Weighting: 20% reading & 10% speaking
Overview
Context & purpose: You have signed up for a two-day language immersion camp in the school holidays for students studying Japanese. You are attending the orientation day and need to work out the gist and specific information in the orientation package, before being interviewed in Japanese about your selections by the camp support staff.
Process, product & audience:
There are two parts to this task.
Part A: You will receive a camp orientation pack. This pack will take you through the options available for different workshops and activities during the two days. You will be required to write answers to questions in English about the options and the reasoning behind your workshop choices. This section will take approximately 15 minutes.
Part B: You will be interviewed individually in Japanese by your teacher who will be acting as a camp support staff member. You will need to consider the decisions you made in Part A and be prepared to answer questions about these decisions and your personal background.
Pre-made task resource
The pre-made task versions will include PDF and word versions of documents so that you can edit the language, add furigana to kanji or delete sections that do not suit your students. You may like to lengthen or shorten the time on task or text lengths depending on the time of year that your tasks are conducted. The tasks are predominately open-ended so there are no embargo dates on the usage. Each task will include two versions of the texts, so you may like to mix and match content to personalise your own version of the task. Each task will cost $70. For further details, please feel free to email me at jblog1help@gmail.com .
We will look at creating some assessments for Continuers as well, but it has been a long time since Beginners have had some nice new resources, so they are first up this time.
Good luck with your assessment planning!
