Student engaged assessment

Exhibited by:

PLO Attended:

  • Student Engaged Assessment

Coached by:

  • Pat Werner

PLO GOALS

We attended the Professional Learning Opportunity for several reasons…

  • to improve and expand our student self-assessment tools through the use of rubrics aligned with our Progress Reports.
  • to increase student ownership and responsibility in selecting portfolio pieces
  • to create self-assessments for our first and second graders to use when analyzing their end-of-unit Social Studies writing pieces.

PLO LEARNINGS- We learned the power and value of letting go of teacher control. We realized the need to guide children to think critically about their work and be able to see patterns and progress.

IMPLEMENTATION

Stage One- Sharing the PLO Learnings

After the first PLO meeting we brought our learnings back to our ½ grade teacher team. We shared that we wanted to let student in on rating themselves and learning to rate themselves HONESTLY. We had rubrics and assessments in place which each teacher had tailored to their own class. However, they did not align to the Bi-Annual Progress Reporting system and they needed to be more child-friendly so that students would understand what a 1, 2, 3, and 4 means.

Stage Two- Creating Self-Assessments

Feb 2017- We created first-second grade student-friendly rubrics and self-assessments which aligned with our Bi-annual Progress Reports and the Common Core Standards and gave children greater ownership of their own growth and learning.

Stage Three- Using Self-Assessments

Mar 2017- While students are always present at our family conferences, this time students led the family conference using the newly-aligned self-assessments.

April 2017- To foster greater independence and accuracy a final student self-assessment was completed by the students only, without including the teacher’s rating.

IMPACT

We collected qualitative data: students’ work- drawing and writing artifacts, self-assessment surveys with self-rating and comments, teacher/student conferencing notes and comments, and teachers’ observations of the process

  • The data showed us that students had previously been very confused with what the 1-2-3-4 rating scale meant and how to apply it to their work. It took repeated explanations and examples for the students to begin to understand the process and its meaning. It was clear to the teachers that starting self-assessments in first and second grade would help students be more honest and accurate in judging their growth and work output by fourth and fifth grade. They will be better at understanding their work and strengths and weaknesses because of the opportunities to assess their work.

CONCLUSION

  • After the PLO, we had a revised assessment tool and better understanding of the time and care necessary to implement self-assessments. We also realized the need of differentiating the assessments for each grade level, as well as for children with special needs.
  • Learning to self-assess is asking a very different set of questions of children. Young children are unaccustomed to analyzing their work. They are happy it is done and over. “I’m finished!” It was eye opening to teachers to realize the time and the practice required for children to self-reflect. But we feel it is a very valuable lesson for children to rate themselves against a rubric, a goal, a model.

NEXT STEPS

  • Commit to using student self- assessments in all classes several times a year.
  • Use a model piece of work/writing as a standard that students can compare their own work to.
  • Model work should be available inside student writing folders to refer to during the writing process as well as during the assessment rating session to honestly and accurately rate their work.
  • Create student self-assessments in Math, Reading, Writing, Social Studies
  • Establish metacognition “thinking about thinking” school-wide, as part of our school culture.
  • Staff commitment to sharing self-assessment processes in their classrooms
  • Portfolio work selection controlled by informed students, not teachers