HOW DO WE ASSESS?

The assessment component in our school’s curriculum is structured around four key dimensions: monitoring, documenting, measuring, and reporting on learning. Each dimension serves a distinct purpose, yet together they provide comprehensive evidence to inform and improve both teaching and learning. While the dimensions are not equally weighted, each holds its own value and importance. In line with the PYP philosophy, our school places particular emphasis on monitoring and documenting learning, as these dimensions are critical in offering timely and actionable feedback that supports students’ ongoing growth.

The four dimensions of assessment (Teaching & Learning Pg:76)

Monitoring learning

At DPS New Chandigarh, monitoring learning is a central component of assessment and is aimed at tracking each student’s progress against personal learning goals. It is an ongoing, reflective process that provides teachers and students with the information needed to make informed decisions about next steps in learning. Monitoring is designed to be holistic, incorporating multiple strategies to ensure a balanced and complete view of each learner’s development.

Key Approaches to Monitoring Learning:

• Observations: Teachers observe students frequently and systematically. Observation can range from a broad, panoramic perspective, focusing on the whole class, to a proximate view, focusing on an individual student or activity. Teachers may adopt varying roles, from non-participant (observing from outside the group) to participant (engaging within the group), to gain insights into both learning processes and student engagement.
• Reflection: Students are encouraged to engage in reflective practices, articulating their understanding, learning processes, and areas for growth. These reflections help teachers tailor instruction to meet diverse needs and foster metacognitive skills. Reflection also supports the development of attributes of the IB Learner Profile, such as being reflective, inquiring, and principled.
• Collaboration with peers and teachers: Ongoing dialogue between teachers and students creates a supportive environment for discussing progress, setting goals, and providing feedback. Peer collaboration through group projects and cooperative learning tasks allows students to monitor understanding collectively, exchange ideas, and develop communication and social skills.
• Feedback and Feedforward: Teachers provide timely, specific, and constructive feedback, highlighting strengths and identifying areas for improvement. Students are also encouraged to give peer feedback and engage in self-assessment, promoting a culture of shared understanding, responsibility, and continuous improvement. Feedback is forward-looking, guiding students on how to enhance their learning and take ownership of their progress.
• Evidence-based insights: Monitoring integrates multiple sources of information, including observations, student reflections, peer interactions, learning journals, portfolios, and artifacts from tasks and inquiries. This comprehensive approach ensures a rich understanding of student learning over time.

By integrating these strategies, monitoring learning at DPS New Chandigarh supports a learner-centred environment where students are empowered to take responsibility for their learning. It enables teachers to make evidence-based instructional decisions, differentiate learning experiences, and promote a culture of continuous growth. Ultimately, monitoring learning develops assessment-capable learners who reflect critically on their learning journey, set meaningful goals, and engage actively in the learning process within a supportive, collaborative educational community.

Documenting Learning

At DPS New Chandigarh, documenting learning is a deliberate and systematic process that captures students’ progress, achievements, and inquiries over time. It provides a holistic view of learning, supporting reflection, goal-setting, feedback, and informed instructional planning. Documentation makes the learning process visible to students, teachers, and the wider school community, fostering accountability, reflection, and student agency.

Key Methods for Documenting Learning:

1. Performance-Based Assessments
   • Tasks provide authentic, meaningful challenges that often allow multiple solutions and require the integration of various skills.
   • Methods include demonstrations (science, sports, dance), role plays, designing and conducting experiments, exhibitions, community action, story illustrations, model construction, and oral presentations.
   • These assessments are often multimodal, using audio, video, or narrative records to capture evidence of learning.
2. Process-Focused Assessments
   • Students are regularly observed, with behaviours and progress recorded across contexts to ensure validity and reliability.
   • Tools include checklists, inventories, learning logs, reflection journals, graphic organizers, learning stories, and mini-exhibitions.
3. Open-Ended Tasks
   • Students are asked to communicate original responses to stimuli, encouraging creativity and critical thinking.
   • Examples include class charts, model constructions, photographs, video presentations, illustrations, and comic strips.
4. Selected Response Assessments
   • Single-occasion exercises such as tests and quizzes (e.g., multiple choice, true/false, or fill-in-the-blank) provide focused data on specific knowledge or skills.
5. Constructed Response Assessments
   • These assessments require students to apply knowledge and thinking skills to real-world problems.
   • Examples include graphic organizers, mind maps, templates, flowcharts, data graphs, concept maps, and Venn diagrams.
6. Portfolios
   • Portfolios are curated collections of student work documenting learning over time. They capture both process and product, reflecting knowledge, conceptual understanding, transdisciplinary skills, and learner profile attributes.
   • Portfolios include student reflections, self- and peer-assessment records, teacher feedback, work samples, and evidence from both homeroom and specialist areas.
   • Students actively select and annotate their portfolio entries, fostering ownership, self-reflection, and responsibility for learning.
   • Portfolios support differentiated assessment, three-way conferences, and communication with parents, highlighting both progress and learning growth.

            Essential guidelines for portfolios

• Every student maintains a portfolio in their homeroom, accessible for reflection and review.
• Portfolios are shared with parents during scheduled conferences and taken home at the end of the year.
• Entries should include work demonstrating growth, not just the final product, and be accompanied by reflections from both students and teachers.
• All work must be dated, signed, and appropriately acknowledged by teachers.

7. PYP Exhibition
   • The PYP Exhibition is the culminating assessment of the Primary Years Programme.
   • Students select a real-world issue for extended inquiry, applying their acquired knowledge, skills, and approaches to learning.
   • The Exhibition emphasises research, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration, and celebrates the agency, initiative, and achievement of students, involving teachers, peers, and families.
     
     

Documenting learning ensures that assessment is reflective, comprehensive, and student-centred. It provides a permanent record of student progress, fosters metacognition, encourages self-regulated learning, and informs instructional decisions. By systematically capturing evidence of learning, DPS New Chandigarh promotes a culture of growth, transparency, and continuous improvement aligned with the philosophy and principles of the PYP.

Measuring Learning

At DPS New Chandigarh, measuring learning provides “point-in-time” data that reflects students’ achievement, understanding, and progress at a specific moment in their learning journey. While recognising that not all learning can or should be measured, the school uses a range of carefully selected assessment tools and strategies to compile an accurate and comprehensive picture of each student’s knowledge, skills, and conceptual understanding. The active participation of students in the measurement process develops their assessment capability and fosters ownership of learning.

Assessment tools for measuring learning

• Checklists: Lists of information, attributes, or elements that should be present in student work to track completion and progress.
• Exemplars: Samples of student work that provide concrete standards for judging other examples.
• Rubrics: Criteria-based tools with descriptors that guide assessment of student performance across predetermined scales.
• Anecdotalrecords: Brief written notes based on teacher observations of student behaviour, engagement, or responses.
• Continuums: Visual representations of learning stages, showing progress, developmental levels, or positioning in a learning process.

WHEN DO WE ASSESS?

At DPS New Chandigarh, assessment is an ongoing and integral part of the learning process, conducted at different points to inform teaching and support student growth. Prior knowledge or diagnostic assessments are used at the start of a unit or learning sequence to identify students’ existing understanding and inform planning. Assessment for learning (formative assessment) occurs continuously during lessons to guide instruction, provide feedback, and support students in developing skills and conceptual understanding. Assessment as learning is embedded in daily classroom activities, enabling students to reflect, set goals, and monitor their own progress. Assessment of learning (summative assessment) takes place at the end of a unit or inquiry to measure students’ mastery of knowledge, skills, and concepts.

1. Prior Knowledge / Diagnostic / Baseline Assessments
   • Conducted at the start of a unit or sequence of learning, these assessments identify students’ existing understanding and skills.
   • Data gathered informs instructional planning and allows teachers to tailor learning experiences to meet the needs of individuals or groups.
2. Assessment for Learning (Formative Assessment)
   • Provides ongoing information to guide both teaching and learning.
   • Helps teachers adjust instruction, identify misconceptions, and provide targeted support.
   • Examples include:
     • Class observations and spontaneous responses
     • Group discussions and collaborative tasks
     • Learners’ projects, drawings, and journals
     • Quizzes and short tests
     • Peer assessments
     • Graphic organizers, such as Venn diagrams

3. Assessment of Learning (Summative Assessment)
   • Occurs at the conclusion of teaching and learning cycles to measure student understanding and mastery of knowledge and skills.
   • Summative assessments are designed to allow students to demonstrate deep understanding and application of concepts, aligned with the PYP objectives and criteria.
   • Students and teachers co-construct success criteria for these assessments.
   • Examples include:
     • Multimedia presentations
     • Oral presentations to peers or teachers
     • Written reports or essays
     • Creating models or prototypes
     • Debates or persuasive writing

4. Assessment as Learning (Ongoing Assessments)
   • Empowers students to take ownership of their learning by actively reflecting on their progress, setting goals, and monitoring growth.
   • Embedded in daily classroom interactions, it incorporates observations, selected responses, exit tickets, self-reflections, and peer feedback.
   • Students use success criteria to evaluate work, maintain reflection journals, and engage in collaborative assessments to refine their understanding.
   • This approach builds metacognitive skills, supports personalized learning, and enables teachers to adjust instruction in real time.
   • Assessment as learning emphasizes both what students know and how they apply knowledge in authentic, real-world contexts, fostering self-regulated, independent learners aligned with the IB Learner Profile.

Measuring learning at DPS New Chandigarh is integral to informed teaching and meaningful learning. By combining diagnostic, formative, summative, and ongoing self- and peer-assessments, teachers gather actionable evidence to support student growth. All measurement practices are designed to be inclusive, transparent, and reflective, providing a clear picture of student understanding while promoting student agency, reflection, and continuous improvement.

Reporting Learning

At DPS New Chandigarh, reporting is an integral part of the assessment cycle, designed to keep parents informed about their child’s learning progress, achievements, and areas for growth. The school employs multiple reporting methods, including structured conferences, digital report cards, and student-led presentations, to ensure transparency, collaboration, and shared responsibility for learning.

Reporting at DPS Mohali aims to:

• Involve parents, students, and teachers as partners in the learning process.
• Reflect what the school community values in terms of learning, growth, and development.
• Be comprehensive, honest, fair, and credible.
• Be clear and accessible, using language that is understandable to all stakeholders.
• Enable teachers to incorporate insights from the reporting process into future planning and instruction.

When do we report

• The school follows two reporting terms:
  • Term 1: April to September
  • Term 2: October to March
• Progress is reported to parents/guardians at the end of each term.
• Digital platforms for reporting-Toddle is used in Primary Years. Digital report cards are shared with parents and archived on the school’s education platform.

Additional reporting practices

• Individual Meetings: Parents may request meetings with teachers at any point during the academic year to discuss concerns or queries.

How do we report

The school conducts six learning community conferences annually, each lasting approximately 10–15 minutes, involving the homeroom teacher, the student, and the parents. These conferences provide meaningful dialogue about student progress and foster collaboration between home and school.

1. Three-Way Conferences –Goal Setting Meeting: Held at the beginning of the academic year, this conference involves the parent, student, and homeroom teacher. Together, they set broad goals and establish SMART objectives, identifying the student’s strengths and areas for improvement. Students from Grade 1 onwards actively participate in the goal-setting process, fostering early ownership of learning.
2. Inquirytrails: Conducted once a year for Early Years and Primary Years, these formal conferences provide students with an opportunity to showcase their learning and understanding through presentations and demonstrations to parents.
3. Parent-Teacher Meetings (PTMs):Held four times a year, PTMs allow educators and parents to collaboratively review student progress, discuss individualized learning needs, and plan strategies for continued support, promoting a holistic approach to student development.
4. Student-Led Conferences (SLCs):
   • Conducted once a year, SLCs place students at the center of the conference. Students take responsibility for leading the discussion, presenting work samples (from portfolios or gallery walks), and reflecting on their learning journey.
   • Teachers facilitate by providing guidance, observing parent-student interactions, and recording anecdotal evidence of student performance and engagement. SLCs emphasize student agency, reflection, and ownership of learning.

Reporting platform

The school uses Toddle to record attainment in skill-based assessments. Progress is captured through clearly defined descriptors, which are adapted for each learning outcome in alignment with assessment practices.

What do we report

Written reports provide a comprehensive summary of students’ summative assessment records and overall progress. These reports highlight each learner’s strengths, areas for improvement, level of participation, and development across disciplines. All reports are shared with parents in digital format to ensure timely and accessible communication.

Reports are issued twice a year. Written feedback for subjects are included in the report card.

For coherence and clarity, reports are compiled in the following sequence:

1. Unit of Inquiry 1, 2 and 3 (with comments)
2. Language
3. Mathematics
4. PSPE
5. Arts (Music, Visual Arts, Drama)
6. AdditionalLanguages (Hindi, Punjabi, French)
7. ATL
8. Elements of Early Years (only for EY 1, 2 and 3)
9. Homeroom Facilitator Comment- Overall

This structured reporting system ensures that parents receive a clear, holistic, and organised overview of their child’s learning journey.

Differentiated assessments

At DPS, New Chandigarh, the Primary Years Programme (PYP) recognises that each student learns in unique ways. Differentiated assessment ensures that all learners have equitable opportunities to demonstrate their understanding, skills, and conceptual growth. It is a flexible approach that responds to individual strengths, learning styles, interests, and needs.

Differentiated assessment aims to:

• Provide multiple ways for students to demonstrate learning.
• Support individual learning needs and promote student agency.
• Foster engagement by valuing diverse ways of thinking and expression.

Key principles

• Variety of methods: Teachers employ a mix of strategies including observations, open-ended tasks, performance-based assessments, portfolios, peer and self-assessments.
• Flexible task design: Assessment tasks offer choices in topics, formats, or presentation modes to match students’ readiness and interests.
• Adapted success criteria: Learning goals remain consistent while success criteria can be tailored to individual abilities.
• Formative feedback: Ongoing feedback guides students toward higher levels of understanding and skill mastery.
• Inclusive practices: Tasks are designed to be accessible to all learners, ensuring fairness and authenticity.

Examples

• Choice-based projects aligned with unit inquiries.
• Tiered tasks of varying complexity.
• Flexible groupings for collaborative learning.
• Portfolios showcasing selected work with reflective annotations.
• Alternative modalities such as oral, visual, digital, or written presentations.

Exploration tables/Learning stations