I do not want assessment at the end of a unit to be a surprise – it is a clear picture of what I expect from students. The more realistic and authentic an assessment is to the real world, the more applicable the performance goal should be to the student.
Sharing the final assessment task with students is important, but it is also critical to explain specifically how I will evaluate students on this task ahead of time. Meaningful performance tasks can often be evaluated against a set of criteria and scored in a rubric. To give the criteria more meaning, it is important to include examples of past student work and how I evaluated it. This makes expectations for the final unit assessment(s) clear to students before learning even begins.
I intend to pretest students with a quick, informal assessment at the beginning of each unit to get a grasp on what each student already knows, where misconceptions exist, and in what ways instruction will need to be differentiated. If this pretest involves the creation of an artifact, it can be repeated at the end of the unit and compared to demonstrate learning for each student.
Instead of being strict on the method a student uses to demonstrate their understanding, I will create sufficiently clear rubrics that look for evidence of learning in a variety of performances and artifacts. In some cases, I will limit this flexibility to push students to explore a format they are less comfortable with. To save student and teacher time, I will also be careful about allowing too much choice when some options are clearly more efficient than others.
First, it is important to check that students understand the goals and expectations for the class, unit, and task. Once I confirm that the goals are in sync, it is critical to give students work that can be quickly checked for progress and correctness so the teacher, peers, and the student him/herself can constantly make sure he/she is going in the right direction. In math, I will always make my students show their work for the first few problems until they demonstrate that they can get every problem correct. Students will be asked to check their answer after every problem (that has a single answer) so they never repeat a mistake and allow it to become a habit. Whenever a student gets something wrong, it is their responsibility to check with a peer, the teacher, their notes, or a textbook to correct the error. When I give feedback, I will be timely, specific, and understandable to make the information usable for the student to make the appropriate correction. It is the teacher’s responsibility to circulate the room looking for problems and answering questions. It is also the teacher’s job to create a class culture that is tolerant of short-term failure, collaboration, looking-up answers, and striving for 100% mastery of the material.
I will get students involved in goal setting by allowing them to propose customizations to the rubric and project timeline. This allows them to make projects more conducive to student interests and learning needs. I will also ask students to periodically assess their own work with the rubric so they can reflect on how well they understand the material and are progressing with the task. On the final assessment, teacher and student evaluations will be compared to look for discrepancies. If any arise, I will discuss it with the student.
I believe that a student should be allowed to re-test or re-submit work when they do poorly. Taking a test or completing a task should not help students “cheat the system” if I do a good job making expectations very clear ahead of time – the assessment is not a secret. However, a re-test or re-submission means additional work for me. To make sure this work is not in vain, the student will need to show evidence that he/she has seeked help and put in the effort to understand the material and is now prepared for a second chance.