Volunteers and Assessment Tutor Bulletin #3

What is this all about?
This is the third of four bulletins being sent to community-based literacy agencies across Ontario. It is written for volunteer tutors, so please make as many copies as you need and pass them on. The bulletins are designed to help tutors better understand the assessment process and their role in that process.

Bulletin #1 (April 2001) introduced assessment and noted that it can occur at any point during a learner’s program (initial, ongoing and exit). Bulletin #2 (June 2001) focused on ongoing assessment and provided some strategies that you can use with your learner.

This Bulletin will look at how the learner can become more involved in the assessment process.

Introducing self-assessment
Learners should be active participants in the assessment process. Being able to clearly identify the skills they have learned and the skills they will need to reach their goal means that they can become full partners in determining their individual learning outcomes. But remember – selfassessment will be something new for some learners so they will need to take some time to get used to the idea and to learn how to include it in their learning.

Here are some ideas to help get you started:

The first thing you might want to do is talk about is a ssessment and why it’s an important part of learning. Learners are not likely to take an active role if they don’t see the point. An excellent source of information is the “Way to Go series of bulletins published by the Ontario Literacy Coalition earlier this year. Another good source of information is Bulletin #1 in CLO’s “Volunteers and Assessment Bulletins”!

Ask the learner to think about what he learned today. Then discuss what parts of the lesson he enjoyed and what parts were frustrating. Ask him to think about why some activities were more enjoyable than others. This exercise can help the learner become more familiar with his personal learning style. Once the learner has become more comfortable with recognizing his learning style, he can become a more active participant in lesson planning. (Please note: he and she are used interchangeably in this article).