Assessments For and As Learning
As a teacher, as much as we need assessments of learning, it is equally as important to assess students for learning and helping them to self-assess.
To begin, I think teaching students to feel comfortable and confident is a big part of assessing as learning. Students are able to let me know if they understand something or not and not feel like they are being “graded” for it. I always like to tell students that when I ask them to put thumbs up if they understand or thumbs down if they don’t, it isn’t to single them out but to help me know that I need to instruct differently. After one of our classes, along with a rubric that was posted in the classroom for a writing assignment, I handed out a checklist to each student. They were going over their rough draft to make changes before writing their final copy. The checklist had question such as “Do you have…” and then went down a list of things I asked for them to include. I told them it was for them to use and make sure they didn’t miss anything. It worked really well. It stopped them from asking me and made them responsible for checking for details.
I have also found that sometimes what students write in their journal isn’t always the best way to find out what a student knows. The past couple of days, my students were to write a summary of four pages they read in a novel. Some of their entries were confusing and not accurate. So I asked each student that had responses I didn’t understand, I just simply asked them to tell me about what they read or explained what they were confused about. When they could verbally tell me better than what they wrote, I graded them based on what they could tell me instead but encouraged them to try to write what they could tell me. I utilized the six facets of understanding by having them explain, interpret and getting their perspective in order to understand they way they were learning and relating to the text. I think that when students are given some power, control and direction, they gain more confidence in their own learning.
In formal assessments and assessing for learning, one of the readings states “information from student interviews guides my instruction”. I think this is extremely important for teachers to remember. It would be so easy to assume that I am teaching or instructing well and that it is not my fault if a student doesn’t understand. A good teacher makes adjustments to the instruction until we are able to make a connection. I know I have talked about exit slips a lot this year. It was the first year that I have really used them. It was helpful to me so that I could see if my instruction was catching on or if I needed to differentiate. It was also helpful because I could pull small groups from instruction and focus on the students that needed other or different instruction.
In making a connection between assessing for and as, it is important to know what and why I am assessing something. It is important for the students to know so that they will feel confident in expressing themselves. I always told my students that the exit slips were not being graded but that it was so I could see what I needed to teach differently. They still (keep in mind this was 4th grade) loved to hear the answer after I had collected all the slips so they could know if they got it right or wrong. But I wouldn’t always just give the answer. For instance, with the language arts questions, I would go through each possible answer that they could have chosen and I would ask why or why this would not be a good answer and we would talk about it. I would say this goes along with empathy, trying to understand why a student understood something the way they did.
In class last week, there just seemed to be several overlapping assessments and it was hard to really put some in only one category. I feel I understand the “as” and “for” learning better than “of”. But being in the classroom helps me to find and make connections with what we discuss in class. It is also fun…I mean educational to apply some of these activities to see how students fell about them. I like to use inquire based activities because it gives students a chance to express themselves and helps me to become a better teacher.
Wow Nancy. It's amazing that you're already changing your teaching practice to incorporate what you've learned about formative assessment. I was particularly excited when I read that you were using the 6 facets of understanding to change the way you ask students questions and to take a new perspective on their thinking. I wonder too if you could incorporate peer assessment into the journal writing task in order to generate more discussion and expertise with the task- what if you taught students to ask each other questions about the reading and to offer suggestions on how to be more clear in their writing (maybe using 2 stars and a wish as a format for providing feedback). This would have to begin with a mini-lesson on how to ask questions and another on how to provide feedback on someone's writing: beginning with you modeling, then them practicing under your guidance, then the students doing so independently. That would be an incredible way for students to learn to engage in conversations about the readings and their own thinking. And your use of exit cards is wonderful- you seem to be an expert on this tool since you use the results for multiple purposes: to differentiate instruction, to plan instructional groups, to inform your teaching, to gain a sense of what students understand, as well as to use as a teaching tool to discuss student responses (there's a video on www.teachingchannel.org that has a fabulous example of "My favorite no"- a similar use of exit cards). I definitely can see that the 6 facets are a guiding force in your planning of formative assessments and deeper level questions to accompany those assessments. It's so exciting to hear formative assessment in action- continue to challenge yourself as you increase student independent learning and ask deeper questions!
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