| To subscribe |
 |
Inspired
Teacher
Blog
|
|
Assessing How I Learn
What tools can you teach your students to use to assess the ways in which they learn, and how can these tools help them succeed in school?
Read (and respond to) the Blog.
|
Center for Inspired Teaching is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that exists to ensure schools make the most of children's innate desire to learn. We do this by investing in teachers. Please visit our website to learn more about our philosophy, programs, and results.
|
|
|
What is self-assessment?
|
|
|
As educators and as adults we self-assess all the time. When cooking a new dish we determine whether we need to add more salt, less pepper, and what we might do differently if we prepared it again. After a job interview or a date, we replay the questions and answers in our heads and identify areas where our responses might have been stronger. And as teachers we do this constantly: when a lesson bombs, when a fight erupts, when a discussion goes perfectly, we try to figure out the cause behind these effects.
Self-assessment is an essential characteristic of the lifelong learner. It's the impetus that fuels us to learn more, try again, strive for improvement, aspire for greatness. And like just about everything else, it's something you can teach your students to do.
You can start with something small like asking students to write down how they think they'll do on a test prior to taking it, and then writing how they think they performed after the test is over. You can have students take a graded test home and rework the questions they got wrong for homework. During a sustained silent reading period, or independent work project, you can meet with students individually and have them discuss how they think they're doing in your class. (You can also accomplish this kind of reflection in a written homework assignment.) We're nearing the end of the first quarter so this is a great time to try any of these strategies!
If you want to make self-assessment a more formal process in your classroom (and we encourage you to do so!), consider that most of the research on student self-assessment stresses the following:
- Involve students in the process of determining what they will be assessed on. If it's a writing assignment, do a brainstorm around what they think constitutes a quality piece of writing. Help students to develop either a holistic or analytic rubric that measures their effectiveness in achieving this criteria. (Check out the rubric activity below if you want a refresher on how these work.) Or help students to develop a questionnaire or discussion format that they'll respond to in evaluating their work.
- Walk students through the process of using this rubric/questionnaire/discussion format to evaluate their work. You may do this by collectively assessing one piece of writing or one project.
- After students have done their own self-assessment, give them specific feedback regarding their evaluation.
- Make the process a regular habit, not an occasional experience in your instruction.
_______________________________
INSPIRED TEACHER HOMEWORK:
How are you fostering the skill of self-assessement in your students? Please send Jenna a short description of your strategies. If your idea is selected for inclusion in the next newsletter we'll send you some great Inspired Teaching gear!
Email: jenna@inspiredteaching.org
Last Week's Inspired Idea:
We asked teachers to share a strategy they use to get to know their students. Seventh grade science teacher, James Abbatiello, had this to say:
"I make a point of calling home for all of my students at least once in the first quarter. I make sure these calls are positive. I share something great that I've observed about the student in class and ask the parent or guardian if they have anything they want to share. Usually they're so shocked to get a positive phone call from a teacher that they don't have much to say. But this sets the stage for deeper conversation, when needed, as the year goes on."
|
Chocolate Chip Cookie Rubrics
|
|
Guide students through the process of creating their own rubrics using cookies as the items to be assessed. This activity can be adapted to any grade level. For lower elementary grades you may want to use pictograms to demonstrate the desired qualities in a chocolate chip cookie. For upper grades you may want to include a literacy activity at the end of the project where students describe the process they went through to create the rubrics, and explain why rubrics are useful as tools for assessment.
Click here to learn more.
|
Teacher Resources
|
|
Self-Assessment in Portfolios
NCREL provides some good guiding questions for students to answer when reflecting on the contents of a portfolio of work.
Student Self-Evaluation: What Research Says and What Practice Shows
A wonderful information-packed article from the Center for Development and Learning that explores the research behind the self-assessment movement and its potential impact on student learning. The article contains very detailed instructions for implementing self-assessment in your classroom as well as strategies for helping students to understand and embrace the practice.
PALS
Performance Assessment Links in Science offers tons of hands-on, field tested performance tasks for grades K-12 complete with standards for each exercise--an assessment rubric, teacher and student instructions, and samples of student work. This site is AMAZING and a wonderful resource for bringing science to life in your classroom!
Mark Your Calendar for Smithsonian Teachers' Night
Friday, November 14
Teachers of all subjects and grade levels can find new classroom-ready resources and attend demonstrations led by Smithsonian educators at the Smithsonian's annual resource expo for educators. Smithsonian Teachers' Night takes place at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery, whose programs are collectively known as the Donald W. Reynolds Center for American Art and Portraiture, above the Gallery Place-Chinatown Metrorail Station. Entrance to Smithsonian Teachers' Night is free, but you must register on the website. For more information and to register, visit www.teachersnight.org.
| |
|
|
|
