QHE work samples: how to annotate them

The rule, in one line

Two dated samples in each of three learning areas, for six samples total. The three areas are English, Mathematics, and one other (Science, HASS, HPE, the Arts, Technologies, or Languages). Each sample needs an attached parental annotation.

What counts as a sample

QHE is permissive about format. Accepted evidence includes:

• Photographs of written work, worksheets, calculations.
• Scanned scrapbook pages, drawings, paintings.
• Photographs of practical activity (cooking, gardening, sport).
• Photos of build / construction / model-making.
• Excerpts from a learning journal or observation diary.
• Audio or video clips under 4 MB.
• Transcripts of conversations or oral assessments.

What matters is not the medium but that the sample evidences learning and is dated. Undated samples are the most common reason assessors send a report back.

Choosing two samples that show progression

For each learning area you submit two samples, ideally taken at different points in the year so the pair demonstrates growth. An early attempt and a later one is the strongest structure. Two samples from the same week, two photos of the same project from different angles, or two pages from one workbook all weaken the evidence value because they show a moment rather than a trajectory.

If you genuinely don’t have a paired set in some area, that’s fine; choose your two strongest and let the annotations carry the narrative.

The 4-part annotation

For every sample, the annotation has to cover four things. Assessors are looking for this structure, often explicitly:

1. What your child did.The concrete task. “Wrote a one-page narrative about our beach holiday.” Not “did some writing.”
2. What you observed.Observation language, not impression. “She used dialogue tags correctly for the first time and self-corrected two spelling errors as she wrote.” Not “she really enjoyed it.”
3. What learning it demonstrates.The skill or concept the work shows mastery (or progress) on. “She is building narrative structure (orientation, complication, resolution) and applying punctuation conventions independently.”
4. How you supported it.What you did as the educator. “I read aloud three picture books with strong dialogue earlier in the week and we talked about how authors signal who’s speaking.”

One to three sentences per part is plenty. The annotation is usually 60–150 words total. Longer doesn’t mean better; what assessors are looking for is whether all four elements are present.

Language that works

• Use observation verbs.“Demonstrated by…”, “applied…”, “self-corrected…”, “explained…”, “persisted through…”.
• Be specific.“Solved 12 of 15 multi-digit subtraction problems with regrouping” beats “did some maths”.
• Connect to a goal. If your educational program listed a related goal, name it. Ties the sample to the broader narrative the assessor is following.
• Don’t hide difficulty.“Still building confidence with longer texts; this sample was a breakthrough” signals self-awareness, which assessors like.

Photo logistics

Photos of work need to be readable. Good lighting, no glare, the whole page visible. Capture the date with your phone so EXIF metadata is preserved (some parents photograph in front of a wall calendar to make the date visible in-frame too). File size limit on attachments is around 4 MB; compress before embedding into the Word document. If you’re photographing a 3D project (cooking, building) two angles of the same object count as one sample, not two.