In Self-Assessment, Timing is Everything!

Assessing our War of 1812/Napoleon Inquiry

When the Growing Success: Assessment, Evaluation and Reporting in Ontario Schools document was released in 2010, teachers in my province were obligated to change assessment practices.  This was upsetting and at times confusing.  I certainly didn't initially understand what exactly was expected from me.  The Ministry of Education  ensured, however, that we move forward. They provided funding for release time so that we could meet with colleagues and develop practices. Much of our early efforts in providing meaningful feedback and teaching peer evaluation skills were experimental and included false starts and misinterpretations.  We got better at it, though.  As we experimented, understanding deepened. Today, my approach to assessment is very different from those early efforts.  In fact, I have probably spent more time thinking about and having conversations about assessment during our War of 1812/Napoleon Inquiry than during any work I've done previously with students. Even technology, while a component of the inquiry,has taken a back seat to assessment.  Much of this is due to the stage that I am at in my own professional development.   As I've learned how to teach within an inquiry  or project-based learning model, the place and purpose of assessment has risen to the fore.  

One element that has changed in my practice is the point at which students and I co-create success criteria. Students need time to play with ideas, conduct research and think critically about the information they encounter before being presented with the expectations of a culminating task and what final demonstrations of learning should look like. 

Previously, I would have developed success criteria at the beginning of the task. Discussion would have taken place before students actually began working.  Feedback and peer-evaluation would occur once the rough copy was finished.  The criteria would then be used to assess the final product.  For our current inquiry, after a great deal of learning and discussion in class, students were introduced to the linoit tool and  given very loose parameters: construct a board that displays what you have learned, what you think is important and what you have thought about during this inquiry. Some students began to immediately place content. Others took time to explore various themes before deciding on a final topic. As they developed understanding of the task, my role was to engage in conversations with students about their boards. 

"Tell me about your board.  What have you decided to include?  Where are you finding your information.  That's interesting, what else have you found out?  How do those ideas connect? ..."  My talk is deliberate. My goal is to get them to think about why they are approaching their work in the manner they have chosen.  I am constantly prompting them to engage in metacognitive thinking  

Students took different lengths of time to develop personal goals and purposes within the loose parameters.  At what I identified as the 2/3 point , we stopped to reflect on what they had accomplished so far and their next steps. One student volunteered to be interviewed in front of the class.  I love the idea of presenting a not yet finished project. This gives students time to reconsider and make changes before their work is cast in stone. 

All students were given a copy of the following and are expected to critique their own work as part of their final submission.

Linoit Board Critique

Research shows that students make the greatest gains in their learning when they are able to assess their own work, reflect on what they’ve accomplished, identify areas where more work is needed and then set their own goals for learning.  You are going to take some time to reflect on your learning for the Linoit Board.  Answer the following questions in full sentences on lined paper.

         1.    When you were asked to create a board that reflected what you had learned during this inquiry, what did
                 you decide to focus on? Why?

         2.      How successful do you think you were? Why?

3.      Is there evidence on your board that your vocabulary has grown?

4.      What further research did you conduct on your own? At home? At school?

5.      Describe a change that you made to your board and why you made it.

6.      Explain the layout of your board and how you decided to organize it.

7.      Was anything difficult about this project?

8.      What are you most proud about?

9.      How does your board demonstrate higher level thinking?

10.  If you were to do this kind of a project again, what would you do differently?

If you were to give yourself a mark on this project, what would it be?

-1         1          +1        -2         2          +2        -3         3          +3        -4         4          +4

Why?

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

In interviewing a student in front of the whole class using the above questions, all students learn how to think when critiquing their own work.  Presenting a not yet completed project is low risk for the student who models self-assessment. He could still go back and make improvements to his board. The student I interviewed stopped me the next day to explain how in going back to his board, he reconsidered some of his responses during the critique.  He had continued to think about his work beyond the interview in front of the class.

Students then returned to their own boards. Most students were discussing changes they were going to make or not make now that they had had this opportunity to think about their work. 

Today we stopped once again, this time to develop a final check list. 

I began the class with this, "All of you now know what it is like to create a linoit board that reflects your own learning. If you were to assess someone else's board, what would you look for?"  The class generated ideas which I gathered on chart paper. Then while students continued to work on their boards, I formalized the list.

War of 1812/Napoleon Linoit Board

Task: create a board that shows your learning.

What did you learn?

What did you think about?

What do you think is important to remember?

Success Criteria:

           

Content:                     4          3          2          1

-lots of detail

-additional research

-specific (ex: dates, number of ships or troops, names, places)

-accuracy

-vocabulary

-thorough

Thinking:                    4          3          2          1

-doesn’t just rely on retelling information, but attempts to interpret, make inferences

-includes questions you had or continue to have

Organization:                         4          3          2          1

-logical (ex; timeline, themed sticky notes, icons/emoticons)

Visual Appearance:   4          3          2          1

-pictures

-font

-lay out – it is clear that thought has gone into the layout

Mechanics:                 4          3          2          1

-capitals

-periods

-spelling

-sentence structure

Comments:

___________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

As we were in the computer lab, I grabbed students screens to show them the list and asked, "Does everybody agree that this is what we are going to look for when we assess our work?" Students commented, suggested a few changes, but also spoke in terms of what they knew was still weak on their own boards.  They were much more "present" and engaged with the checklist than they would be if I was presenting it at the beginning of the inquiry.