How Assessment for Leaning Operate in School: St. Thomas Becket Catholic College - Coursework Example

St. Thomas À Becket Catholic College A Brief Introduction: Opened in September 3rd, 1963, the prestigious college was originally d as St. ThomasÀ Becket School. The school draws special focus on the spiritual and moral development of individuals along with their educational advancement. The main purpose of the college is to provide every individual with the best education by means of religious experiences and development of educational practices in Christianity. I was amazed to find accurate learning methods of the school’s educational objectives. The curriculum of the school is designed with a Catholic Christian framework that teaches us to grow in harmony, grow in the love of Christ. The school community is taught to live and learn in God’s love. I think it is a great effort indeed by the college to engage every individual of the college in daily prayers and worship as part of its meaningful educational experience. Ways of learning: Successful schools always engage their students in all aspects of their learning. St. Thomas college also believes in that. It conducts various conferences led by the students so that they should be aware of all the important issues while learning educational values. The college encourages students to get involved in friendly interaction with their teachers and their fellow partners. The main objective behind the student-led conferences is that every student must realise his or her potentials, the strengths and weaknesses. Such conferences have great educational values in terms of balancing both summative and formative assessment practices of the students. The teaching methodology of the college is simple yet full of substances for students like us. I have realised the importance of the classroom assessments. The everyday classroom tests are really helpful for students in order to improve their strong points in some subjects, and work on their weaknesses in other subjects. In this context, summative and formative assessments are important for the students as well as the teachers to gather information on the student’s performance and progress. Summative and formative assessments: The primary objective of summative assessments is to check the students’ understanding of subjects and their performance. St. Thomas À Becket Catholic college conducts a series of exams, aiming at the improvement of student performance. I support the objectives behind Cognitive Abilities Test or commonly known as CAT, which is a complete set of nine tests checking the student’s verbal, quantitative and non-verbal skills. CAT scores are quite helpful in improving our abilities to recognise similarities, analogies, patterns and relationships. CAT tests are indeed one of the best monitoring tools to identify individual student’s cognitive strengths and weaknesses. The teaching activities at St. Thomas À Becket Catholic college are directed to improving the performance of each and every student. This plays an effective role in the student’s future life and career. The college also conducts GCSE or General Certificate of Secondary Education examination for students in their late teens so that they can make important decision on their future career. The exam offers a number of subjects that can have a serious impact on their future choice of education and in career as well. Formative assessments are those classroom practices that are required to adjust teaching and learning. Student involvement is a must in formative assessments. At St. Thomas, teachers take special care of these adjustments and motivate their students to learn. It is the responsibility of the teachers to engage their students in classroom practices through which, the students can gather essential information for understanding a particular subject and prepare themselves for the assessment tests. I found teachers at St. Thomas being extra careful while designing the assessment tasks. Besides, one of the biggest advantages of a St. Thomas student is that he or she gets descriptive feedback from the teachers in almost every classroom practice. Students record keeping: The website of St. Thomas À Becket Catholic college represents its mission and objectives with much élan. It clearly identifies the values of learning, which ultimately helps students to acknowledge their potentials for preparing themselves for future career options. The website maintains a regular diary of important dates of events and activities so that students as well as their parents can take part in them. The website also makes a list of important announcements and assemblies taking place in the college. You can check the news and events section on the college website to get important updates on various general and college events. The school calendar includes lists of important dates for exams, holidays and parents’ information events. The college provides a well-managed e-earning portal for students and parents as well. The e-portal section is technologically updated. You can login to one of the four options in order to get into the relevant school system, Serco e-portal YHGL Virtual Learning Environment St. Thomas À Becket Catholic College Intranet Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access These systems contain students reports, students attendance, and complete personal information of students. The overall performance of the students is recorded and stored here. If my parents want to enquire about any behavioural event that I participated or the sessions I missed, they can simply login to one of the school systems above. I believe my parents would find the reports section most important as it publishes the grades and comments for each subject I have studied in a year. These report cards are important for me too in terms of performing in sessions and exams. St. Thomas À Becket Catholic college makes sure that students are getting involved in all sorts of educational activities with their active participation in all areas. There is an Education Welfare Officer (EWO) who is in charge of handling students reports, performances and problems among other related issues. The EWO is responsible for the following issues (St. Thomas À Becket College 2008): Poor college attendance Latecomers in college Behavioural problems Exclusion from college Special educational requirements for particular students Transfer and admission issues of students Welfare benefits for students Self and peer assessment: Students at St. Thomas are involved in self assessments programmes that help them evaluating their learning skills and abilities. We generally build a strong learning community within a classroom. This helps us in creating an appropriate environment for learning. The self-evaluation processes also make us become assessors as well as convincing resources to other fellow students. Our teachers make special efforts to build an education-friendly environment where we can learn together and improve our metacognitive skills, achieve the pre-determined goals, and make new improvements in studies. I believe that such assessment processes are really important for students in order to build themselves mentally and logically ready for future career advancements in life. The assessments practiced at St. Thomas À Becket Catholic college actually imbibe us with improved learnability and confidence building skills that play effective role in the formation of our abilities and skills for future learning processes. The website of St. Thomas À Becket Catholic college also provides parents with useful information on their children’s education system. The parents must know what their children are learning. There are several sections provided by the website on the current and future curriculum of the students. Parents can enquire at parents centre and BBC parent’s college guide in order to understand the future education policies of the college. What is most important for students, parents and teachers is the realisation of the role that education plays in articulating and improving a human being. Reference: St. Thomas À Becket College 2008, http://www.stthomascc.co.uk/index.htm Read More