A User's Viewpoint

A great idea from Steve at Bluestone School in Timaru (thanks for letting us share this, Steve!)


"Thank you for the use of the SWATS test. This has proved some interesting results for our year 7 and 8 team.

We intend to use the information for:

Identify students achieving above 8 or more correct questions. These students are the students whom we deem to have a sound thinking skills knowledge.

Identify students achieving 4 or less in their SWAT test. These students have knowledge below where we expect them to be with their thinking skills.

Identify new students. This is to see if there is a pattern of students coming into the school whose knowledge is below where we would expect them to be at Bluestone School.

Identify students with Reading Needs to see how this effects their chance of scoring an acceptable score in their thinking skills. This will help us to identify if we need to make it an oral test for them next time.

Compare class results. This will illustrate if some teachers are achieving better thinking skills in their students.

Our next step is to teach to the areas where we have seen learning gaps.

I have attached a copy of our results from our 5 classes.

Thank you again for the use of the SWATS tests."

Steve Fennessy
Bluestone School
Timaru

Download Steve's spreadsheet in Excel format (names removed) - you can use this yourself!
Download the PDF for the SWATS test
Download the Student Answer Sheet