: Introduction

The assessments included two tasks which involved the students in sorting and classifying information. Both were team tasks, and used very similar instructions and marking criteria. The information to be sorted and classified was, however, quite different. One of the tasks was attempted by year 4 students, the other by year 8 students. Both tasks are released tasks, and therefore described in detail here.

The results achieved at both year levels were quite similar. Only a few teams at each year level failed to sort the information into 4 to 6 piles, as requested. However, at least two thirds of the teams at each level did not include a special "reject" pile for the information which was not relevant to the specific task given. This was a major limitation in their work. About half of the piles formed at both year levels were coherent and appropriately labelled, but few teams managed to create a complete set of piles which were individually coherent, non-overlapping, and accommodated all of the information. One possible interpretation of the results is that students have had little experience with sorting and classifying tasks similar to these ones.