The Importance of Self-Assessment

I am at ASCD Empower18 right now and I have a two hour lunch break. I just got out of a session with Starr Sackstein and I am totally inspired to write. If you don't know Starr, you should check her out. She is doing really amazing things. I learned about her in this podcast from the cult of pedogogy: https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/starr-sackstein/. In this podcast she talks about her approach to teaching without grades. I was so impressed with her and I just wanted to absorb everything I could from her. Her session today was about "Teaching Students to Self-Assess".

In this post, I'm going to talk about what role self-assessment plays in my class right now and also talk about the ideas that I got from Starr for how to improve.

Self-Assessment is one important form of reflection. It is an important part of metacognition and can help students with goal setting. In everything that I have read from Marzano Research about CBE, self-assessment and tracking is key to the process. It gives students confidence and helps them to figure out where they are in their understanding of the content. Starr emphasized how the entire purpose is for students to think about their own learning.

When I first started with CBE, I used "math journals". They looked like this:

In the last five minutes of class students would fill these out with whatever they wanted to see. I collected the journals once a week and made comments and suggestions.

These worked...ish. But often the students were not diving deeply enough into their understanding of the content. They would say things like "I learned standard 3" for the first question and then "I will do my pass-off for standard 3 tomorrow and then start learning standard 4". I wanted to re-shift their focus on how well they had "learned standard 3."

I decided to try something new with the goal of shifting the focus of student reflections onto the content standards that they had worked on that day.

Now, I give students two options: a chart or a graph.

The graph is organized by standard. The write the number of the standard at the top and the date along the x-axis. Each day, they make a bar representing what level they think they are at for that standard.

The chart is organized by date. Each day, they write the number score that they think they would receive at that moment for the standard that they practice that day. Most students prefer the chart but there are a few that use the graph so I always give them the option. They get one "progress tracker" for each unit.

Now, I make sure that students do not take pass-offs until they think they would receive at least a 3 on it.

An important piece of this is that students know how to rate themselves. Since they have access to the practice pass-offs, they know exactly what a "2" looks like, for example. They can try the practice pass-off and determine whether or not they know how to do the level 2 questions. If they can, they should earn at least a 2. If they can't, they are still at a 1 or a 1.5.

This has become part of the routine in class. Even without me asking, the students know to begin filling these out in the last few minutes of class.

At the end of the unit, I look at these trackers before students take the cumulative summative assessment for the unit. I sit down and discuss it. We look at which standards took the longest and which ones they were able to reach level 3 on within a given day.

While I think this is a good start, after participating in Starr's workshop, I see some definite room for improvement. One of the major aspects that I think is missing is a reflection about the actual learning process. Starr suggests asking students "how did you get there?", "what challenges did you face?" "how did you get around it?" These are all really important questions that I want my students to be thinking about. I don't think it's practical for me to make the students answer these questions every day at the end of class but I really want to incorporate them. I'm just brainstorming right now but here is something that I want to try: When they feel ready for the unit summative, instead of just handing in their completed chart or graphs, I will also ask them to reflect on these questions:

1. Which standard in this unit was easiest for you to master? What made it easy? How did you know you got it?

2. Which standard in this unit was hardest for you to master? What made it hard? What did you do that finally got you to a level 3?

Another piece that I am missing is more conversation about the learning. I need my conversations with the students to be a bit more in depth and focused. They should be longer and given more weight. Starr is able to have deep conversations by having the students reflect using a google form. She reviews their reflections before the conference so that she can dig more deeply during the conference. I'd also like to try to make a digital way for the students to do their reflections. That might take a bit more brainstorming.

Looking forward to letting you know how it all works out!