About the ARBs

The Assessment Resource Banks (ARBs) are a collection of educational articles, conceptual maps, and formative assessment resources in Maths, English and Science for use with New Zealand students working at levels 1-5 of the New Zealand Curriculum. 
The assessment resources are research-based assessments developed by NZCER resource developers/researchers experienced in assessment, curriculum, and teaching and learning.
 
Introduction to the ARBs
 
ARBs flyer 2018.png
 
Assessment resources can be used as a source of evidence of student learning for making overall teacher judgments (OTJs) for the Learning Progressions Frameworks.
They can also be as next learning steps or to further explore specific learning ideas in more depth.
 
They are available free of charge to educators from all New Zealand schools and educational organisations.
 
Click to register for a password and you will receive an email to verify your account. Once verified registration will be reviewed and followed by a confirmation email.
 
Once you have logged into your ARB account, you will be able to preview resources, save collections of resources to folders, get URLs for online-interactive student tasks (Student URL), share assessment resources, view your students' results from online tasks, and print and rate resources.
 
ARB assessment resources:
  • are aligned to the New Zealand curriculum statements in English, Mathematics, and Science at levels 1 to 51
  • are piloted and trialled in NZ classrooms
  • intended to support classroom assessment for learning within New Zealand schools.
  • consist of tasks for students to complete and teacher support information and, in some cases, have examples of students' work.
  • include support information for teaching and learning discussions. 
  • include a broad range of assessment tasks. 
  • are regularly reviewed and revised, and more new resources added (currently on hold). 
  • can be used to provide evidence to support overall teacher judgement (for the Learning Progressions Frameworks: https://arbs.nzcer.org.nz/otjs-learning-progression-frameworks-and-arbs)
There are two main types of assessment resources:
  • pencil and paper
  • online interactive2
1There are a small number of Level 6 assessment resources for Trigonometry, Pythagoras' theorem, and distance-time graphs in algebra.
2Some online interactive resources are also auto-marked. This means that all the questions within the task are auto-marked with results shown to students.
 
In addition, many of the resources are informed by the nationwide trialling and/or classroom-based research. 
This research, and other classroom and trialling support information published online from time to time in the form of articles (https://arbs.nzcer.org.nz/research-and-articles) or conceptual maps (https://arbs.nzcer.org.nz/conceptual-maps).
 
 
History of the ARBs
 
A range of articles about the early development of the ARBs: