Just Try-It Tuesday: Involving Students in Assessment

It is no secret that it is a difficult time to be a teacher. In today’s test focused world many seem to try to whittle down student learning to a single number.  Students are much more than that number.  While I don’t believe that any test will ever be able to accurately measure learning with complete precision, I do believe that teachers can use formative assessments to help increase student achievement.  I also believe to make this process even more successful, we have to find ways to put students in the driver’s seat as best we can. Below I will discuss a few ways of doing just that.

Today’s Just Try-It Challenge: In order to involve students in the assessment process help them to answer 3 questions:

1. Where am I going?

2. Where am I now?

3. How can I close the gap?

Where am I going?

Sharing Specific Learning targets with students: Telling students exactly what you want them to learn and why it is important to learn it is just common sense.  It is difficult to hit a moving, or hidden, target.  Writing the target on the board (I talk about this more  here.) is a strategy to help with this, but if that is all we are doing, there may be a good chance students still can’t answer that first question.  Learning Targets should be part of our conversations with students.  We should create opportunities to make targets part of conversations with each other.

Clearly explain criteria for success:  I mentioned moving and hidden targets earlier.  Now picture a bulls eye.  What can we do to help students hit the bulls eye?  We have to show them where the bulls-eye is, and if possible make it easier to hit.  In other words students have to know what success looks like. Likewise, they need to know what missing the mark looks like. Scales/Rubrics used well are a great way of clarifying to students what different levels of success look like. However, when creating these, be sure to include concrete and descriptive language. Adding examples to rubrics is a great way of making success criteria more concrete.

Use “anchor papers” and modeling to clearly distinguish strong work from weak work:  The term anchor papers, as I am using it here, refers to student samples that represent each level of quality on a rubric or scale. Using these models helps students SEE what success and failure during the “input” stage of a lesson.

I have spent some time recently in math classes, I find most math teachers do this really well.  They spend a lot of time modeling how to complete each step of a complex process. As a result students,when it is time to practice independently  students have access to successful models in their notes.  Many math teachers also use error analysis exercises to show students common misconceptions and what weaker work may look like.  If we take the time to ask students to reflect on these models and error analyses, students will get a better idea of where they are going and what to avoid.

Sports Metaphor: Many coaches enter games with a specific game plan.  We are going to focus on stopping the run(football), or we going to attack the wings, and so on. A lot of times these plans are designed to take advantage of an opponents weakness, or counteract their strengths.

In order to execute a game plan, the players need to know a few things:

• What is the game plan? (Communicating targets)
• Why is it going to work? (Communicating targets)
• How do we execute it? (Communicating targets)
• What does it look like when done correctly? (Defining Criteria for success)
• What happens if when not done correctly? (Defining Criteria for success)

If players are able to answer these questions in practice, chances are when it comes time for the game, they will be able to execute the game plan successfully.

Where am I now?

Co-create rubrics with students:  Rubrics help students answer the question “What does success look like?”  However, just handing students a rubric doesn’t guarantee they understand it, know how to use it, or really care about it.

Involving the students in creating a rubric can address all of these issues.  This can be done by showing students “anchor papers” or examples of student work and asking students to analyze the work and determine the characteristics  that lead to high quality work.  Students will also be able to point out some “what-not-to-dos.” When students are involved in creating a rubric, they obviously have more awareness of what success looks like, but more importantly they have more ownership of the end product.  Once these co-created rubrics are clear, students will be able to use them to peer/self-assess.

Post-test self assessment reflections: After formative or summative assessments, it is helpful to help students analyze and reflect on their own performance.  Simply looking at the overall % of questions they got right doesn’t give them any actionable information. A self assessment would require students to reflect on their performance in regards to their learning targets. Ideally, students would be able to compare results to other assessments on the same target, so they could track any growth.

We want them to understand exactly where they were successful (this helps validate any efforts they put into the product) and exactly where they were not.  When students know exactly what they need help on, they are more likely to make an effort to improve.

Sports Metaphor: Think of a team (any sport) that just lost a game. They obviously know they lost, but may not understand why they lost. A good coach can usually pin point these reasons by analyzing the game. A coach may have team watch film and discuss when the team effectively executed game plan and where they failed to execute (Co-creating Rubrics).

The next step for the coach would be to help each player understand their own strength’s and weaknesses in regards to the game plan (Post-Test Self Assessment). The players should understand the things they should keep doing, and the things they need to do differently. Just like athletes, students need feedback to help pinpoint what’s working and what isn’t.

How do I close the gap?

 

Small groups: When teachers and students are aware of weaknesses, addressing them in small groups can be beneficial.  In a small group, a teacher can address a specific area of focus to only the students that need it.  This has several benefits:

• It honors the learning of students that mastered the content.
• Small groups results in more repetitions.
• Small groups allows for timely feedback.
• Students are more likely to ask questions in small groups.

Independent practice using other resources: (back to text):
Occasionally, when students fail they may have the capacity to use resources to get them back on track.  So, rereading a chapter (or more likely “actually” reading the chapter) prior to practicing may be the only intervention needed.  Providing students with directed time to access proper resources and additional practice may help them fill the gap.

Student led conference:  In some situations, short, verbal, student-led conferences can be the most efficient ways of addressing misconceptions.  Student-led conferences occur when the student is in the driver seat and reflects on mistakes or misconceptions and/or explains to the teacher how they have improved their learning or addressed a misconceptions.  These can take several forms, but ultimately involve the student being accountable for their learning by discussing how their work is evidence of mastery.

Involve parents: Parents can sometimes be an untapped resource.  It is true that some parents struggle to be involved in their students’ education.  This lack of involvement seems to increase as students get older.  However, this does not always mean that parents aren’t concerned and do not want to help.  In some cases, it may be that parents just don’t know how to help.  By the time students are in high school, the subject matter is very complex, and most parents aren’t experts in the subject matter.

Rather than overlooking them as a resource, it may help to communicate with them exactly how they can help. This may be as simple as keeping them informed about learning targets, due dates, projects, and tests, but can also involve sending them simple practice exercises or questions to discuss their kids.

Sports Metaphor: Coaches are great at identifying specific areas of improvement their players need.  Here are some ways coaches help players fill the gaps:

• While the team is working on something else, a targeted group of players  work with an assistant coach on a specific skill (small group).

• Coaches may assign certain players to do spend practice time watching a  speed/agility training video and practice independently using a  speed ladder (independent practice).

• Coaches often discuss outcomes of matches with individuals and allow the player to lead the discussion asking them questions like “How did you do?” or “What do you think you need to work on moving forward?” These reflective conversations help players be accountable for their learning and provides them with a plan to improve” (student-led conference).

• Youth coaches communicate often with parents about their child’s progress and share quick, easy activities that parents can help their kids with at home. (Involving parents).

Closing Remarks: The most successful people have an idea of where they are headed, where they are currently, and what to do in order to get to where they want to go.

The answers to three questions are not easy to come by for all students.  We may be tempted to simply give them the answers and expect them to improve, but the real learning occurs when we create situations where students answer these on their own.

 

 

 

What should I write on the board?

I wrote about learning objectives earlier this week but wanted to zoom in on one element of learning objectives that I find very important and helpful for students and teachers.  Writing and posting learning objectives is great, but if we are just doing it to “jump through a hoop,” or to fulfill an evaluation requirement, we are not serving ourselves or the students.

When walking into the classroom in the morning, it may be easy to forget to write the daily objective down. Even if we do manage to get it on the board, is it meaningful or are we using it?

One way to make learning objectives meaningful is to make them specific. I quoted Marzano in my last post who basically said the more specific a learning goal the better.

Inspired by a lesson I observed this morning, here is an example of the role specific objectives can play.  Consider the following learning goals:

1. Today we are going to learn about poetry!
2. Today we are going to learn about Haiku and Limerick Poetry.
3. Today we are going to identify the characteristics of Haiku and Limerick poetry and compare and contrast the effects of those characteristics and analyze how they impact the tone of each genre.

Consider these questions and I will speak to each of them briefly:

1.  How would developing a learning goal like #3  help you design the rest of your unit?

• Specific learning goals give students and teachers common direction.

Everyone is on the same page and understands the end result expected. To take it a step further teachers can then elaborate using a scale to explain levels of criteria to meet the objective, but let’s save that for another post.

• A specific learning goal will help teachers develop tasks,activities,and assessments more effectively.

Consider #2, a slightly more specific goal than #1. This goal does not help the teacher consider activities because it is too general.  Whereas with #3, students know that they will need knowledge of the characteristics in order to eventually describe what effects those characteristics have. So a teacher who knows students who have to compare these two styles may ask students to look closely at both types of poems and analyze the characteristics of each completing a Venn Diagram to record their learning. A teacher lacking a specific goal may result in a lesson where the teacher just reads the poem and discusses it with students without any specific focus.  How can we identify if a student is learning if the what the student is supposed to learn is not clear?

2. Let’s say you are teaching this and you are going to use the Venn Diagram Task I explained above, but you posted learning goal #2 and barely talked about it.  How much difference would it make to specify that objective and refer to it throughout the lesson and what are some strategies to help do that?

• By writing the specific learning goal and discussing with students, teachers will have a reference point throughout the lesson to help students remain focused on the task at hand. We can more easily chunk their learning.  Teachers could say things during class like

“All we are doing now Is identifying characteristics of a haiku, later we will move on and talk about their effects and even use them in our writing, but first we need to find out what they are.”

• When students demonstrate success with learning goal by identifying a few characteristics of each poem we can point to the board and give them some positive reinforcement by letting them know they have completed the first part of that learning goal and then probe them toward the more complex part. That is difficult or impossible to do with vague learning goals. This may sound like:

“Yes, that’s right (insert name here) Haiku Poems are very short and follow a specific pattern, How does that effect the tone?”

• Using those objectives to help clarify where the lesson is going and using them as a reference point to show them where they are in relationship to the goal is one way to help students track their progress.

• So, when we walk in the room in the morning, I encourage to think deliberately about your learning goals and rather than wasting your time and energy by writing down a goal that won’t help you or the students, spend time developing a specific goal and use it during the lesson to help keep you and students focused on the end result during the lesson.

If you have ideas or reflections about how you use learning goals in your classroom, please share them in the comments below.

Further Reading: http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/the_tempered_radical/2008/11/student-friendly-learning-goals-.html

Learning Goals are the foundation for success

In this post, I would like to address how a simple tweak in classroom practices could have powerful results.  I plan to follow up with a series of short posts that address how to use learning goals effectively.

Best practices for all content areas require that we teach with the end in mind, in other words, we have already established what we want students to know or do as a result of our teaching.  Sometimes we assume that because WE know where we are going that our students do too.  Many teachers will agree that making these types of assumptions about students can often lead to stress and frustration on both ends. Writing and using clear goals help students and teachers by giving them a specific target to aim for and the means to measure the progress towards that target during instruction.

“The research strongly implies that the more specific the goals are, the better they are”(Marzano 2009).

Learning Goal in US History

Common mistakes using learning goals:

• Goals are not stated or posted at all.
• Goals are posted but teacher does not refer to them explicitly.
• Goals are too general (Understand Photosynthesis –> Students will be able to describe how photosynthesis functions in terms of respiration, nutrition, and growth).
• Teacher does not explain relevancy of goals to students.
• Teacher does not establish criteria for learning goals.
• Activities are posted in place of learning targets.

Tips:

• Begin with the standard then clarify specific daily learning targets (knowledge and skills) required to meet standard.
• Ask yourself before each lesson what do I want students to understand after this lesson or what will I want students to be able to do? The answers are your learning goals. Write them on the board.
• Take the first bit of class after bell work to review previous learning goals from day before.

Learning Goal for an ELA class. More specific daily targets were provided for students in handouts and lecture.

After explicitly explaining current learning goal, ask students to summarize what they are supposed to learn today? “What are you going to be able to do before you leave today?”

• Take some time to explain why the goal is important for them. We need to do better than “because it is on the test” if we want students to really buy in. Try explaining how skills or knowledge you are teaching can impact their academic lives, social lives, or their future career if possible.
• Writing the goals down on the board and referring to them constantly when lecturing or answering questions.
• Provide positive reinforcement when students answer questions or provide evidence of progressing on that goal.

Learning Target for reading class.

I’d like to end with a sports metaphor.  A coach would not simply go tell his team to score a touchdown, or hit a home run and expect players to do that.  A good coach would identify specific skills or knowledge along the way  that would result in the ultimate goal.

Then the coach would focus on those in practice and say things like “Today we are going to work on (running routes, blocking schemes…)” Then, more than likely, the coach would  explain how working on those will help result in a touchdown to insure players have some degree of buy-in. Once a coach has a little buy-in from players, he may demonstrate that skill to show what his expectations are in a game. This will help players know what success looks like and give them a picture of where they are in relationship to what is expected.

Now during half-time of the next game, the coach will have a better reference point to speak to players about HOW to score more touchdowns rather than providing an overly general goal: “Just get out there and score more points then them!”

So moving forward, here are some questions to reflect on.

• Am I communicating to students what I want them to know and do?

• Do students know what success looks like in relationship to the learning goal?

• Are my learning goals specific enough?

• What can I do to improve my own use of learning goals and learning targets

Please share any Questions/comments/insights that you have concerning this topic.