Assessment Bank update
The Queensland Studies Authority's (QSA's) Assessment Bank is a rich and varied online collection of assessments and resources linked to the Essential Learnings and Standards. It is designed to support teaching, learning and school-based assessment across Years 1 to 9.
The Assessment Bank opened in July 2008 with 560 items. Today there are over 20 000 registered users of the Assessment Bank and over 750 assessment and resource items.
A recent review of the Assessment Bank identified priority areas for further development and additional assessment packages.
As part of this review, more than 100 teachers were engaged by QSA in a series of external writer workshops in Term 2 2009.
A major source of new items, the external writer workshops have allowed for a rich and diverse range of assessments to be developed to meet a variety of needs across all sectors, key learning areas (KLAs) and year levels.
This model of working in partnership with teachers in schools will be further developed in 2009 and has already commenced with workshops with teachers from Special Schools writing assessments for use with students with special needs.
Assessment Bank developments include:
- the availability of assessment packages across all KLAs
- new assessment packages developed for Languages, with additional packages in development
- new assessment packages developed for the early years (Years 1–3), with additional packages in development.
A new project to embed literacy and numeracy indicators across P–9 into Assessment Bank packages will be jointly undertaken in 2009–10 by the QSA, the Department of Education and Training and the Association of Independent Schools Queensland.
The QSA encourages teachers and pre-service teachers to register and engage with the Assessment Bank.