District Assessment Tools
Foundation Skills Assessment
Each year, students in Grade 4 and 7 write a provincial assessment called the Foundation Skills Assessment (FSA). The FSA assesses reading, writing and numeracy.
We know that reading, writing and numeracy skills have a strong connection with school completion and futire life success. The FSA provides important information early in children’s school years and is intended to complement other information from classroom teachers.
The FSA results can show where children excels against provincial standards and where they might need assistance. Paying attention to individual student results allow parents and educators to make early interventions that can enhance success later in a child’s schooling.
A student report is available for each student following administration of the FSA and is sent home to parents through each school. The report describes your child’s overall results in reading, writing and numeracy. Teachers and parents/guardians are encouraged to discuss student results together.
The FSA results also provide important information for schools, districts, and the Province on how well British Columbia students are doing in reading, writing and numeracy and forms an essential aspect of quality assurance to parents and the public regarding BC’s education system.
Students in Grade 4 and 7 are required by BC’s School Act to write the FSA. For detailed information on the FSA
Early Development Indicator
Early Learning Data
The EDI is an instrument used province-wide once children enter Kindergarten to measure patterns and trends in children’s development health. The UBC HELP (Human Early Learning) Program has been collecting and analysing EDI data since 2001. Over the past 15 years, data has been collected for over 247,724 kindergarten children in BC. As a result, the EDI is viewed as an important foundation for a population health monitoring system that supports increased understanding of children’s early learning developmental outcomes over time and across geographies.
The Early Development Indicator measures children’s vulnerability before entering school using a range of factors: Physical Health and Well-being, Social Competence, Emotional Maturity, Language and Cognitive Development, and Communication Skills and General Knowledge. Vulnerability on two or more scales is seen to indicate vulnerability in early learners.
Middle Years Development Instrument (MDI)
The Middle Years Development Instrument (MDI) is a self-report questionnaire completed by children in Grade 4 and Grade 7. It asks them how they think and feel about their experiences both inside and outside of school. Both the Grade 4 questionnaire and the Grade 7 questionnaire include questions related to the five areas of development that are strongly linked to well-being, health and academic achievement.
Physical Health & Well-Being
Children evaluate their own physical well-being in the areas of overall health including body image, nutrition and sleeping habits.
Connectedness
Children are asked about their experiences of support and connection with the adults in their schools and neighbourhoods, with their parents or guardians at home, and with their peers.
Social and Emotional Development
Children respond to questions about their current social and emotional functioning in 7 areas: optimism, self-esteem, happiness, empathy, prosocial behaviour, sadness and worries.
School Experiences
Children are asked about their school experiences in 4 areas: academic self-concept, school climate, school belonging, and experiences with peer victimization (bullying).
Use of After-School Time
Children are asked about the time they spend engaged in organized activities such as sports, music and art, as well as the time they spend watching TV, doing homework and playing video games.
Numeracy Math Assessments
In the spring of 2018 a group of CMSD teacher leaders — named the CMSD Numeracy Committee — was drawn together to collaborate to establish a vision for a balanced numeracy program in the district. From those rich conversations, grew a desire to find a numeracy assessment that would support student learning in pedagogically sound ways. The group identified some basic criteria: that the assessment be authentic, manageable, classroom embedded, require little reading and give good data to teachers to enable them to improve instruction of and learning for their students. They indicated that the tasks should provide feedback on key mathematical strategies, processes, skills and concepts. It was important that the tasks be open-ended in order to include all students and to invite flexible, fluent thinkers to show what they know in multiple ways.
In the fall of 2018, under the direction of Carole Fullerton the CMSD Numeracy Committee set about selecting and designing tasks to use in classrooms that met that criteria. Tasks were field-tested in winter and spring of 2019, and exemplars of student work were collated. Rubrics and scoring templates were created to facilitate scoring in consistent ways.
The intention is that these tools be used in every classroom, fall and spring, from Kindergarten through Grade 10.
- Kindergarten Tasks
- Grade 1 Tasks
- Grade 2 Tasks
- Grade 3 Tasks
- Grade 4 Tasks
- Grade 5 Tasks
- Grade 6 Tasks
- Grade 7 Tasks
- Grade 8 Tasks
- Grade 9 Tasks
Early Primary Reading Assessment
EPRA (Early Primary Reading Assessment) is K-grade 2. There are 2 forms to the assessment: common text for fall and spring, and leveled text to be used throughout the year. The common text assessment can be administered to the whole class or to small groups of students. The leveled text assessment is best administered to small groups of students as students choose a ‘just right’ book for themselves, from a collection of 4-6 choices.
BC Performance Standards - Non Fiction Reading
Grade 3 - Spring - Water Movers
Grade 3 - Fall - Hungry Plants
Grade 5 - What Happens After You Flush - Spring
Grade 5 - What Happens After You Flush - Fall