Children’s work

The teaching approaches described in these guidelines may be used by teachers to provide a range of learning experiences for their pupils. Children’s participation in the various activities, both formal and informal, provides a flow of information about their progress in the SPHE curriculum.

This information is crucial to the teacher’s professional judgement about how successfully pupils are learning and in enabling him/her to help children to learn more effectively. A number of techniques will be used in collecting and recording information about pupils’ progress in SPHE. Each has its contribution to make in assisting the teacher in assessing progress, identifying strengths and difficulties, communicating to the pupil, parents, and others and in planning further learning experiences for the child.

Teacher observation

Teacher observation is one of the most important tools of assessment in SPHE. Aspects of children’s learning that teachers notice while SPHE topics and issues are explored and taught provide both immediate and essential information about each child’s learning. Informal observations may be made as children undertake tasks or explorations, engage in a range of interactive and individual assignments, interact with the teacher, and take part in discussions. Observations can be valuable in helping the teacher to assess the extent to whichchildren have developed particular attitudes and skills and the extent to which they have learned to engage in self-assessment and in setting their own goals and targets.

Some of the details of children’s learning that emerge may do so in an incidental manner, while on other occasions teachers may decide to look for particular learning outcomes.

As the teacher observes the children in their everyday interactions and conversations in the class, he/she can take note of the ways in which they can work with others, the types of questions asked, and the level of interest and selfconfidence displayed. The teacher can also recognise the children who are able to seek help and those who have or have not developed the necessary coping skills for dealing with difficulties and change. In observing children interacting with each other, both inside and outside the classroom, the teacher can discover those children who are able to relate effectively to others and those who may need help in developing social skills and abilities.

As children work together on a particular activity the teacher can observe their level of interest in the topic, the way in which they apply themselves to the work in hand, and their understanding of the aspects involved.

It will be helpful for the teacher to keep some notes on his/her informal observations of the children as they work and interact. These notes should be succinct and will be useful for the teacher when planning for the future, and in communicating with the child, with parents and with other teachers.

Teacher-designed tasks and tests

There is a particular emphasis in SPHE on presenting children with opportunities to actively engage in their own learning. Through a variety of structured activities children can explore many issues and topics relevant to the social, personal and health dimensions of their lives. Such activities promote dialogue, questioning, reflection and action. Using a variety of techniques, the children can internalise what they have learned and can transfer the learning to different aspects of their own lives.

In designing tasks and tests that mirror the recommended teaching and learning strategies, the teacher can assess the progress of the child in various aspects of the SPHE programme. Any task used should also reflect the variety of intelligences in the class and not be continually confined to one type of approach. For example, where the class have learned to read a photograph or a television programme, the teacher could present the children with a photograph or video extract and ask them to deconstruct the image and talk about their conclusions. Using this kind of task, the teacher will discover the extent to which the process was understood and through further questioning can elicit details from the child about what he/she has learned.

Similarly, the children may have explored ways of resolving conflict. When presented with a number of scenarios where conflict is evident, the children can display their understanding of the strategies and the ways in which they can be applied in each of the situations. The task could require the children to engage in a drama activity or to present their conclusions orally.

On occasion it will be helpful to design a task that could be used to ascertain the child’s knowledge and understanding of a topic. For example, in the senior classes children learn about the concept of democracy and the role of the President, elections and the Constitution. Having discussed and explored these issues in some detail, the teacher could devise a worksheet that could help determine the knowledge the children have gleaned. This can be supplemented or replaced by a task where the children can improvise an election or write a poem on ‘A day in the life of a President’. All these types of activities will help the teacher to assess the nature of the understanding acquired by the child.

In the junior classes children learn about ways of keeping safe. Subsequent to the exploration of this unit the teacher could design some activities that would allow the children to illustrate their knowledge of safety and the strategies learned. These tasks could include a series of open-ended statements to be completed, a range of pictorial options from which to choose, or a role-play to be demonstrated.

Other options include children carrying out surveys or interviews or gathering items that represent a particular concept. The list of possible tasks is endless and when used judiciously can be very informative for the teacher when planning further activities in SPHE.

Portfolios and projects

Many samples of work will emerge from the activities carried out by the children. Where these are gathered in a portfolio compiled by the child they become a useful source for assessing children’s understanding and skills. Portfolios can range from a simple folder or wallet to a scrapbook or file.

Throughout a year there will be many examples of work carried out by the children, and while all these may be kept by the individual child in a personal portfolio, a selected sample can be chosen for inclusion in the portfolio that will ultimately be assessed by the teacher. The sample chosen, either by the child or by the teacher, should represent a variety of work indicating the child’s progress in and experience of various strands of the curriculum.

Samples should have attached the date of the activity and an indication of the help, if any, that was given to the child in completing the task. This collection will allow the teacher to make a professional informed judgement about the child’s progress and his/her readiness for further learning experiences. Samples can be used as a basis for displays at the end of a term or a school year and can inform the assessment that is recorded on the pupil profile card.

Projects that are carried out in the class by an individual or groups of children are also a useful means of assessing children’s understanding and their skill and attitudinal development on a particular topic. The teacher can note the information gathered, the methodsof research used, the way the children worked together, the styles of presentation, and the facility with which children answered questions related to their project.

Both portfolios and projects have a role to play in providing the teacher with information to communicate to parents about the child’s progress. They are also helpful in ascertaining children’s ability to set individual or group goals and targets and the ways in which these were or were not achieved. They may also contribute to the teacher’s planning, indicating certain difficulties, the limitations and strengths of particular approaches, or the content that is well covered and that which may need further consolidation and exploration.