Date
30 July 2025

Assessment and monitoring using a team approach

Form a team, collaborate and gather evidence to understand your learners and their needs.

On this page:

Establish a team

Establish a team

Take a team approach to providing responsive support.

  • Be guided by ākonga and their whānau.
  • Involve your learning support coordinator or RTLB.
  • Identify and connect with colleagues who have relevant past experience.
  • Consider connecting to external expertise or agencies.

Take an inquiry approach

Take an inquiry approach

Develop a responsive evidenced-based process of working together that supports learner self-advocacy.

  • Support the ākonga and whānau to lead and guide the conversation.
  • Work collaboratively to identify key learning goals, responsibilities and what success would look like.
  • Share concerns, questions, and ideas.
  • Consider ākonga strengths as well as barriers to learning.
  • Identify how solutions or strategies will be implemented, refined and reviewed.
  • Discuss how to assess learning in ways that work for ākonga.
  • Agree on how to stay in touch and share information.

Innovate with assessment methods

Innovate with assessment methods

Inclusive assessment means personalising assessments by integrating multimedia options and assistive technologies. Ākonga can express their learning through videos, podcasts, or visual presentations, and utilise tools like speech-to-text software, catering to diverse learning preferences and needs.

Innovative assessment might involve:

  • cross-curricular situations, for example an assessment combining maths and social studies
  • project-based learning where learners solve a problem through a project
  • personalised assessment in a context chosen by the learner
  • multimedia and Assistive Technology integration.

Three students around table with marae made of lego. One student talkingt

Narrative Assessments for Inclusive Practice

A research initiative involving secondary schools and special education providers implemented narrative assessments to document and support the learning of learners working at Level 1 of the New Zealand Curriculum. By capturing learners' learning experiences through narratives, photos, and videos, teachers could better recognise and respond to individual learning needs, fostering more inclusive teaching practices.

Share information using digital tools

Share information using digital tools

John Robinson reflects on the value of sharing information using the school SMS and learner e-portfolios.

Understand the effects of medication

Understand the effects of medication

The use of medication for ADHD can be a sensitive issue. 

Understand possible side effects so you know when to alert parents.

Medication may at times need to be reviewed.

 

Medication can:

  • decrease impulsivity, task jumping, and aggressiveness
  • increase compliance
  • improve handwriting and fine motor skills, social relationships, and short-term memory. 

Medication won’t:

  • increase intelligence
  • improve reading unless attention is the major issue
  • change a child’s personality
  • cause drug dependency.

 Side effects:

  • loss of appetite/mild weight loss
  • insomnia
  • tearfulness, being withdrawn or clingy (these could be signs that medication needs adjusting)
  • rebound behaviour – discuss with professionals.

Useful Resources

Useful Resources

Website

Using narrative assessment to support secondary school teachers’ inclusive practices

This study shows how narrative assessment can be used to support inclusive practices.

Publisher: Teaching and Learning Research Initiative

Visit website

Next steps

More suggestions for implementing the strategy “Identify needs and how to provide support”:

Return to the guide “ADHD and learning”

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