How Literature is Being Assessed at Swiss Cottage Secondary School

Currently, my kids are studying Shrek, the movie.

Firstly, the go through a series of assessments meant to assess the students' knowledge on things like, themes, plot, characterisation, character view points. For the assessments, the school tries to come up with relevant yet fun tasks, such as writing a diary entry as Shrek highlighting his viewpoints on Love and Friendship at the start of the movie, and at the end of the movie. The tasks tend to be relevant, yet not wholly academic in nature. These assessments are tabulated as part of their continuous assessment. I think the students enjoy the process as well as the task. However, I find that some students take it as all fun&games, and tend to forget what they are being assessed on when doing the tasks. This is where rubrics are a very important part of our assessments.

For SA, students also go through a series of tasks. However, the tasks are slightly more academic in nature, which is meant to prepare them for the final exams. We have essay questions, tableaux and dramatisation. To prepare the students for their final exams assessments, these tasks are taught in a more academic way as well, such as, teaching and assessing close-reading skills, etc.

I think that the structure of the assessment as a whole is very sound, as I'm dealing with Sec 1 students who have never studied literature. However, if there is a way to make the students see the relevance of the tasks to what they need to learn (knowledge and skills), I think it will be more successful, even if it means changing the tasks all together.