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Advice for teachers -
Classical
Greek

Sample approaches to developing an assessment task

General information

When developing assessment tasks, teachers should refer to the VCAA policies and school assessment procedures as specified in the VCE and VCAL Administrative Handbook section: Scored assessment: School-based Assessment.

Assessing the task

The VCAA Performance descriptors can be used and adapted to the specifics of the task to assess a student’s level of performance. The assessment tools (performance descriptors, rubrics and / or marking guide) should reflect the outcome, key knowledge and key skills. The assessment task and assessment tools should be explained to students before they commence the task.

The VCAA VCE assessment principles underpin all VCE assessment practices.

Time

School-assessed Coursework assessment tasks must be a part of the regular teaching and learning program and must not unduly add to the workload associated with that program. They must be competed mainly in class and within a limited timeframe.

Conditions and authentication

The teacher must consider the conditions in which the task is completed and the authentication strategies relevant for each assessment task. Information regarding VCAA authentication rules can be found in the VCE and VCAL Administrative Handbook section: Scored assessment: School-based Assessment.

Unit 3

Unit 3 Outcome 2 requires students to analyse the grammar of the Classical Greek prose text set for study.

The focus of the area of study is on classifying words according to their type and category, determining the form of inflected words and explaining the syntax of words, phrases and clauses.

The prescribed assessment task involves responses to questions specifically on accidence (word form) and syntax (word function).

The suggested learning activities can most usefully be sequenced as follows: reading activities (mental, oral, written comprehension and / or translation); parsing activities (classifying, identifying, explaining grammatical elements); practice activities in preparation for the assessment task.

The most important part of this process is verb identification and explanation because this provides the grammatical framework for each clause and sentence. The development of a verb table in the manner suggested in the Detailed Example of a Learning Activity (Unit 3, Outcome 2) is an effective method of parsing verb forms.

Practice activities should be structured to prepare students for the specific requirements of the assessment task.

The assessment task is to be based on a passage of approximately 50 lines of Classical Greek prose text selected from the work prescribed for study. Questions should be devised to cover a broad range of morphological (including case, gender, number of nouns, pronouns, adjectives; degrees of comparison; person, number, tense, voice, mood of verbs) and syntactical (including phrase groups, clause types, participial constructions) features across multiple word types (parts of speech and their subsets – for example, neuter noun of the second declension, second person personal pronoun, preposition taking the dative case).

The assessment task should be conducted under supervised test conditions, with access only to the questions and the selected passage of text, and should be completed in 40–50 minutes.

Unit 4

Unit 4 Outcome 1 requires students to comprehend the meaning of the Classical Greek dramatic text set for study.

The focus of the area of study is on the socio-cultural and historical context.

The prescribed assessment task involves translation of a passage from the set text and responses to questions on the socio-cultural and historical context of another passage.

The suggested learning activities can most usefully be sequenced as follows: comprehending text (reading – skimming, analysing, decoding, understanding; translating – noting, drafting, editing, refining); comprehending context (discussing, researching, recording); practice activities in preparation for the assessment task.

An important part of this process is researching and recording details of the social, cultural and historical background informing the text in order to comprehend the author's meaning as fully as possible. The development of a commentary in the manner suggested in the Detailed Example of a Learning Activity (Unit 4, Outcome 1) is an effective method of organising the relevant information.

Practice activities should be structured to prepare students for the specific requirements of the assessment task.

The assessment task is to be based on two passages of Classical Greek dramatic text selected from the work prescribed for study, one of approximately 20 lines for translation into fluent English, and one of approximately 30 lines to serve as the basis for questions probing the socio-cultural and historical context. Questions for the latter task should be devised to cover a broad range of items (including people, places, dates, events, customs, beliefs, institutions).

The assessment task should be conducted under supervised test conditions, with access only to the questions and the selected passages of text, and should be completed in 50–60 minutes.