Assessment in an IDU

What is important to know about assessment in an IDU?

As in all MYP units, there are two forms of assessment that occur during an IDU: formative and summative.

Formative assessment: "Assessment for learning"

In developing a unit plan, it is effective to identify the specific forms and strategies for providing two types of formative assessment and feedback:

  • informal feedback, including specific opportunities for self-assessment, peer feedback, and ongoing teacher feedback,

  • specific formative tasks and check-ins, which can provide feedback through comments, points or criteria achievement levels. It can be particularly valuable to include comment-based feedback that indicates:

    • students' strengths and growth areas in the knowledge, understanding and skills needed in the development of the disciplinary (if applicable) and interdisciplinary summative tasks

    • students' strengths and growth areas in terms of the criteria descriptors that will be used to assess the disciplinary (if applicable) and interdisciplinary summative tasks

    • students' progress in their ability to communicate their understanding of the unit's statement of inquiry.

Summative assessment: "Assessment of learning"

Summative assessment tasks provide students with opportunities to demonstrate a culmination of their disciplinary (if applicable) and interdisciplinary learning, assessed with MYP criteria.

"Summative assessment tasks should be directly linked to the statement of inquiry and provide varied opportunities for students to demonstrate their knowledge, understanding and skills. In planning these assessments of learning, teachers should ask the following questions.

  • How does this assessment task relate to the statement of inquiry?

  • Which MYP objectives are being addressed?

  • How can we create meaningful performances of understanding?

  • What evidence of learning will there be?

  • How can we collect evidence of learning?

  • How will the assessment task demonstrate conceptual understanding?

  • How will results be recorded and analysed?"

- MYP: From principles into practice

Interdisciplinary and (optionally) disciplinary summative assessment

Interdisciplinary units culminate in an interdisciplinary summative assessment task or tasks. Formative feedback and tasks are developed to provide students with feedback in their progress.

Optionally, teachers can also include discipline-specific summative assessment tasks, and formative feedback and tasks to support the development of those tasks. Students' achievement levels in discipline-specific tasks are recorded in subject grade books and are not used to inform students' interdisciplinary criteria achievement levels.

See the Interdisciplinary summative task, Interdisciplinary criteria, Interdisciplinary formative assessment, and Disciplinary assessment pages of this guide for more details.

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