Talk:Self Assessment

As educators, we are constantly assessing our students. Informal assessments in the form of observation, participation notes, running records, portfolio entries, and discussion go on in every classroom all of the time. I can tell more about how my students truly understand a concept in science by watching then perform an experiment than I can from reading their answers to a multiple choice, true or false, or matching test. While APPLICATION of knowledge is the true hallmark of what a student has learned, we too often rely on an assessment that is sumative - measuring FACTS that a student has memorized. These sumative assessments come at the end of a unit and do not open doors for further learning. A good example of this kind of assessment is the SAT, graduation exams, semester exams, and unit tests. Grades are recorded in a grade book or put on a data base and becomes a piece of information about the student. The information from the test not only fails to give a true understanding of what the student KNOWS, UNDERSTANDS, AND IS ABLE TO APPLY, it fails in a much bigger way. It is not used to drive further instruction.

Formative assessments - usually more informal- allow an instructor to not only measure true student learning, it provides ongoing information about the student that will allow the teacher to plan and implement future lessons that will fill in any gaps, provide future lessons to strengthen skills or to provide enrichment to the students who have mastered skills.

The use of a rubric is an extremely effective way to measure student learning. This rubric should be detailed and shared with students and parents ahead of time. There are many excellent sites on the weve for creating a rubric. I have used http://www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/rubrics/ I think it is extremely important for students to be a partner in their learning experience. A good way to begin this partnership is to engage the students in creating a rubric that will be learned to assess their learning. When students are involved in setting the criteria for learning, they are more likely to succeed.

I see little educational value in summative assessments that do nothing more than provide data. The purpose of assessment should be to drive instruction and to measure understanding, not recall. Performance based assessment, which involves the direct evaluation of student effort on real learning tasks provides useful material for teachers, parents, and students.

Kristin Werner (EDT 630)
The education pendulum is always swinging. These days, traditional methods in which the teacher is the holder of knowledge, is giving way to more constructive methods. This constructive approach considers the teacher a facilitator of knowledge rather than a figure whose job it is to “give” students knowledge. I believe in a democratic classroom that emphasizes student choice as well as responsibility. I am still learning to be a constructivist teacher and consider it my ultimate goal. However, I realize that in order to truly make this shift, I need to involve more self-assessment in my classroom. Because I believe students construct knowledge from within, I must also involve them in assessment. If I administer tests and assessments and “hand down” grades, that conflicts with my beliefs about students' construction of knowledge. I typically use constructivist methods of teaching, but am slowly making the transition to self-assessment.

One way I experimented with this in my classroom last year was to involve students in the making of a checklist to assess their final pieces published at the end of our narrative unit. As a class we discussed what we had learned during the unit, which really revealed to me what they had retained and remembered most about narrative writing. Together we made a list of things that they felt our entire class should be able to master in their final piece. They listed things like “has a strong lead and conclusion,” “uses periods and capitals,” and “includes some dialogue,” which were all topics we fully covered during the unit. Once we made our list, I turned it into a checklist that students used to assess their final pieces. The checklist was also useful during conferences and peer editing sessions. I think the best part of self-assessment is that it can (and should) be used for the students to make goals for themselves. I was proud of how this self-assessment turned out and I look forward to experimenting with it more and more in the coming year.