Friday, March 23, 2012

Assessment shift: Learning or Learning on time?







The classroom is a busy place for a teacher. In high schools, every block means roughly 30 more students, each bringing his/her own strengths, weaknesses, interests, personalities, etc to the class. We know that each student is unique, will learn in different ways and at different rates, but too often we make a generalization and refer to them as our 'English 9 class' or our 'Block G class'. Likewise, because we are faced with the organizational challenge of working with so many students we put expectations on our students that they will all learn at roughly the same pace. Too often, the unintended consequence is that we emphasize 'learning on time' instead of what we should emphasize...LEARNING!

This post focusses on a few assessment practices that educators can implement within a busy 'class' that will embrace each student's individuality and support...
  • students learning at their own pace
  • learning as an ongoing process
  • students learning from their mistakes
Learning Logs
There is a lot for students to learn each class. Sometimes students grasp concepts immediately but most of the time the end of a class signifies a forced interruption to their learning process. When you consider students repeat this same process four times each day, you can start to understand why it's quite easy for students to forget precisely what they were working on when they were interrupted, what they've already mastered and what they need to continue practicing. 

Enter the learning log! Learning logs can exist in a variety of forms. What is important about a learning log is that a student writes down the specific learning targets for the class and self-assesses his/her own progress towards these targets at the end of each class period. The self-assessment could be as simple as a 'green light, amber light, red light system' where students assess themselves a green light if they've mastered a target to the extent that they could teach a peer, amber light if they are getting there but need some more practice and a red light if they need to stop, ask a question, then practice with some guidance from the teacher.

What is most important about a learning log is that it encourages students to track their own progress towards the mastery of learning targets.  Learning logs focus students' attention on their learning progression towards targets rather than simply trying to meet deadlines for completing work. Learning logs also offer students a way to go back in time and update their progress towards a target that they were previously unable to meet, even if the learning target came from a previous unit or term.  Learning logs also recognize that we should be encouraging our students to learn from their mistakes. Say a student uses teacher feedback to correct a process he/she was previously applying incorrectly to solve a certain type of problem.  Even if a student goes beyond the initial timeline for the class to demonstrate he/she has made an improvement, his/her progress is still valid and should be acknowledged.

Flexible Deadlines
Too often, our practices indicate to our students that we are more interested in the timeliness of their learning and less about the depth and quality of their learning.  Inflexible due dates, late penalties and zeros for work not yet completed all send the message to students that as much as we value learning, we place greater value on the fact that they learn certain things by a certain date. These practices penalize the slower learner and force him/her to hastily complete work rather than learn for the sake of understanding. If we truly want to encourage deep learning, we must allow students the necessary time to do so and our assessment practices must reflect this belief.

Here is where the flexible deadlines come in! Does it really matter whether a student learns to solve an algebraic equation or write a chemical formula today instead of next week or next month? Ultimately, are we more interested in seeing students learn or learn on time? I'm not suggesting we should eliminate deadlines completely, but I do think we need to offer our students a little bit of flexibility and acknowledge that some students are going to require a little more time to master certain concepts. Furthermore, our assessment practices should reflect students' most recent improvements in learning.  Just as the new learning of a concept replaces the previous learning of the same concept, new assessments of a student's level of mastery of a concept should replace previous assessments of student's level of mastery of the same concept.

Redo's
Say a student, despite his efforts, struggles to master a concept by the time the class writes a major test. The student performs poorly, receives a low mark, but seeks the assistance of his teacher, who re-explains the concept so that the student understands. Days later, when the teacher checks with the student to assess his level of understanding, the teacher determines that the student now has a solid understanding of the concept. Shouldn't the student's mark on the test now reflect the teacher's most recent assessment? Or at the very least, doesn't the student at least deserve the opportunity to rewrite a similar portion of the test that he struggled with the first time? I would say so! After all, if we want students to accept our feedback, learn from mistakes and we acknowledge that our assessments should reflect students' most current learning, then allowing redo's is a logical step. I'm not suggesting that redo's become a free-for-all. I believe students need to earn their chance at a redo by creating and following through with a plan for improvement. It is ok for students to 'fail' at things but it is unacceptable for them to be 'failures'. By offering redo's we send the message to them that when they make mistakes they will have the opportunity to learn from and improve upon them.

8 comments:

  1. Thank you for clear views. Interestingly, all what you describe, is used to some extent in the French Program "AIM, histories en action" at the Elementary level. Students have duo-tangs with Finished work and Not Finished work, as a type of learning log with various self evaluation through the year. All work is evaluated with a pencil so that students correct their work and work throughout booklets at their own rate. Tests are viewed as a snap shot in time as to how and where one is on the learning to report to parents. Group work is encouraged. mastery of play is used as a means to rewrite and create story endings or rewrites with new characters and situations. Redoes are essential, even on tests for all children to succeed to their highest level of fluency in reading, writing and speaking a second language. IT WORKS SO WELL (nice to the english teachers finally catching on).

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  2. Love you post Aaron. All 3 ideas are solid and accomplish exactly what matters the most which is student learning. I especially like the learning log as the focus is on the student to be responsible and aware of where they are at. This then asks them to be active and in charge of the learning process.
    I also love your plan for students to earn their chance at a redo, again placing the responsibility squarely on their shoulders, brilliant!
    best,
    c

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  3. Thank ou for our comments. At our school, many teachers have recently undergone a shift in their assessment practices to avoid assigning zeroes and late penalties. In a few cases, challenges have arisen where students, despite some persuasion from teachers, have continually failed to submit old assignments. Forcing students to complete work at lunch time and after school with the support and guidance of the teacher has been one strategy that has worked. However, some students still see this as being more about work completion than learning. This is why I think that some sort of learning log or tracking system is important. When I was teaching, I sometimes asked students to track the completion of their assignments. While this was somewhat helpful I often found students continued to focus on work completion rather than learning targets because some were content with simply handing in work even if it wasn't of the best quality. Do either of you have suggestions for shifting students focus to learning?

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  4. I know exactly what you are talking about as we had this problem big time at our school as we too moved away from using zeroes etc.
    I guess for me, whatever the student is being asked to do has to be 100% related to the learning outcomes/standards and the child needs to see how this is true. I know lots of assigned work can be trivial and meaningless. I still invite students to do projects/labs, but they are for learning and not for marks. So if the students chooses not to complete then I do not hold them accountable to those.
    Students show their learning on assessments (I have dropped multiple choice and started to use written answers to bigger questions. I give the questions to students before test date, we work prepping the questions together in class. If the assessment does not go so well for the student, they can apply for a re-assessment (you called it a re-do). For some students it takes a while, but they all seem to eventually figure out that they are responsible for their own learning. I am there to support,help, advice, guide etc. First semester I found it very nerve racking, giving this responsibility to the students, I was so used to being responsible for their learning. But what amazed and reassured me, was that in the end, all students took steps to be responsible. I found learning journals, the tracking of outcomes (in colours like you mentioned), "hot seat" interviews before tests, and re-assessments all helped. As well, I have flipped my classes which has given me time in class to talk and check in with each student every day. The Flipped class also puts the emphasis on the student learning and away from my teaching.
    All in all, it has been a challenging but very exciting year. I am more than happy to share any other resources with you,
    best,
    c

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  5. I agree with you in some respects here in terms of assessment, but my assessment practices may vary in terms of deadlines and due dates slightly. I believe that timing and active participation in a subject should be assessed.For example, I will sometimes ask students to write me an introduction letter at the start of the course, or reflect on paper on a thematic connection to a story that we have just read. Can you really tell me that a student needs all semester long to write an introduction letter? After a certain point, I no longer allow the student to complete the introduction letter. That is basic participation. If one of the principles of learning is that it is an active process, we have to take that into account, and students should be held accountable for that.

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    1. I agree that certain assignments we ask students to complete are very timely in nature. An introductory letter and reflections on a thematic connection to a story sound like tasks that are most meaningful if they are completed by students at specific points in time. So yes, timelines should be short for these types of assignments. If an assignment is important to the learning process (which I expect it must be), then it should be mandatory that the student complete the work. Whether this means requiring the student to complete the work at lunchtime, afterschool or at home should be agreed to by the student and teacher. Since these tasks are about learning, they should be formative in nature and therefore provide opportunities for a student to receive valuable feedback. Bottom line...Learning shouldn't be optional.

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  6. I like and agree with many of your ideas. I have been taking this approach for more than 10 years . . . it really isn't anything new :) I do have a question about how you see these great concepts (like providing extra time to complete assignments, extra time to learn concepts, and the ability to re-do tests and assignments) fit with the assessments we do with children, whether it is the FSAs or authentic district-conceived assessments (in our district we have the DART (district assessment reading tool).

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    1. To be honest, I also struggle to connect the ideas I mentioned to the standardized testing that students are forced to complete. I think the key to keep in mind is that these standardized assessments are just 'snapshots' of a student's learning at any one point in time. What these snapshots fail to capture is the learning progression. Each student's progress should be looked at relative to his/her starting point to get an idea of how much progress he/she is making.
      I recognize that the ideas I shared are already being successfully implemented by many teachers. However, I know that there are many others out there whose students could benefit from a shift in their practice. I encourage you to engage in conversations with colleagues who have not yet made the shift and encourage/support them in doing so.

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