Assessment

Assessment - it's supposed to improve student learning, and yet it can often elicit anxiety or doesn't quite fulfill its purpose. How many times have you seen students skim through their assignment to find their mark, disregarding the comments, or have you yourself done this? Last year a student at my placement threw his rubric right into the garbage after reading his grade... not the response you'd hope for.

In my experience, I benefited greatly from teacher conferences or meetings where the teacher and I reviewed an assignment together or talked about strategies to improve and grow as a learner. Having  a conversation with the instructor and then developing a goal and strategy to meet that goal helped me to visualize the next steps in my learning.

One year my class had a teacher return our assignments with grades and comments and the chance to resubmit them with corrections. I was so used to the finality of a letter or number grade with no chance for redemption that I jumped at the chance to do better. Who doesn't want an opportunity to improve?

Dr. Gregory Firn developed six characteristics that align well with the models we have been given for assessment in the Math classroom:

1. Develop a meaningful feedback loop. Effective Math formative assessment provides on-going data that changes what both the teacher and the learner are doing.
2. Real-time feedback. Timely feedback—while students are learning—is critical so that students don’t practice new math skills, again and again, in the wrong way.
3. Independent learning. Ideally, blended learning is employed so that students are able to engage in some informative assessing activities independent of the teacher. This is how students learn self-assessment and gain confidence.
4. Personalized learning. Personalized learning and individualized instruction are now recognized as crucial elements of student-centric teaching that fosters real progress and achievement. This is a significant departure from the way classrooms have been structured in the past as a “one-size-fits-all” environment with all students generally receiving information at the same time and same way as their peers, regardless of their prior knowledge or academic strengths and weaknesses.
5. Active learning. As Cathy Fosnot emphasized in her webinar, Dynamic vs. Static Assessment: A Growth Mindset Perspective, “Assessment should inform lessons and learning dynamically and formatively, not statically… It captures genuine mathematizing—learner strategies, their ways of modeling problems, and their understanding of key mathematical ideas. Bottom line, assessment needs to be continuous, dynamic, and adaptive so that it can capture where the child is on the landscape of learning—where they have been, what their struggles are, and where they are going next
6. Collaborative implementation. A team effort, involving educational leaders at all levels across the school district, is required for successful implementation of a culture that supports an effective assessment culture. This effort includes sufficient resources (human resources, materials, and funding), ongoing teacher professional growth, and community engagement in developing the vision and plans for implementation.

I'm curious to see how assessment will change over the course of our teaching careers. I definitely would love to see us move away from grades but I realize that may be a long time coming or not at all. 

Why high-flying Singapore wants more than grades