32 Planning with clarity when assessing play

In the interactive videos that you have engaged with throughout this book, you would have noticed that the teachers have clarity about the learning intentions and the success criteria they use to assess the students’ learning. Teachers need to constantly reflect on how they are designing learning experiences and the intent behind these, as a way to ensure they are providing opportunities where children can demonstrate their learning. Think about how the design may influence what learning is able to be captured.

In fact, during a play learning experience, you can give students set tasks that require them to record their findings or write a narrative about their activity. Such documentation in hard copy form, provides an authentic opportunity to provide formal written feedback to students on their playful learning. Throughout this chapter, ways of assessing and evaluating different types of play are explored. Associated with this exploration are different, relevant frameworks for assessing specific types of play.

Read, look, listen

Using questions as framing provides a prompt and guide that can check for clarity around assessment in a play-based program. For example, although designed for Victorian schools, the content within the High Impact Teaching Strategies (DET 2022) can guide any teacher in terms of planning, setting goals, and assessing children’s learning. Drawing from the strategies, we developed the questions listed below that teachers in any context should be able to explain to their learners:

• What is to be learnt – the learning intentions
• How the learning intentions are linked to the bigger ideas and understandings that the learners will learn
• How children will be learning
• How the learning activities are relevant to the success criteria
• How learners will demonstrate their learning – what learners will say, make, write or do with reference to sample assessment tasks
• How this new learning will impact on future learning

Engage and extend

Download this Assessing play questions for teachers and learners handout. Add it to your teaching toolkit. When designing a new lesson or learning experience, use the questions as prompts to both guide your planning, your teaching and your assessment practices.

Assessing play – questions for learners and teachers