Don’t Stop Accommodations at Exams

On Mondays, I share a different ed tech quote on our Thompson Classroom social media pages for our staff to consider.

Final report cards will be sent out in less than three weeks and, for our high schools, graduation events start as early as next week. With this in mind, our schools are in final assessment mode. For some, this looks like the completion of final projects and observations while for others this means final exams.

I don’t want to pick on high schools but I find that when it comes to “final exams” there continues to be an unspoken routine stepped in tradition where these summative assessments are:

• very formal
• fall outside of a regular class schedule
• are written in a new location (like a gym or multi-purpose room)
• usually consisting of students reading and writing to demonstrate their understanding of curriculum

Even in the absence of provincial exams or even formalized school-wide exams (as some schools left this routine during Covid-closures) these assessments are still considered formal and lean toward reading and writing.

I personally believe that the accommodations and teaching/learning strategies that were present throughout the duration of programming should continue to be present in the assessment. This includes, but it not limited to:

• student voice and choice
  • performance demonstrations
  • podcasts/audio files
  • sketch-noting
  • creation
• speech-to-text (Dictate)
• text-to-speech (Immersive Reader)
• etc

The vast majority of our staff have a strong understanding of the importance of these elements in their programming and, for many of their students, these options are present throughout the year or semester. However, the formality of “exam season” sometimes sees these options go out the window and be replaced with traditional practices because “thats what we’ve always done”.

What do you think?