Assessment for Learning: Not Just the Teacher

Carol Gardner
Nov 08, 2010

How can students benefit from Formative Assessment?

You have incorporated Assessment Prompts into your lessons. You stop periodically and use these questions and tasks to check for understanding. At the end of your lesson you faithfully have students summarize and answer the essential question. You use the results to help you determine your next teaching step. But wait, what's missing? Assessment for Learning is not complete if we leave out a key player.....the student! Students should be actively involved in ensuring that learning stays on course. Teachers, however, have a critical role in equipping students to be active participants in Assessment for Learning. Here are some guiding principles to consider along with strategies to support each:

Students should know the learning destination.

Students need to know where they're going and have a tool to help them check to see if they're getting there. This is why it is so important to post the essential question, use it to introduce the lesson and refer to it often during the lesson. It's also important to make sure that the question is posed in student friendly language so there is no uncertainty about the lesson objective.

Students should know what proficient work looks like.

How many times do students ask, "Is this what you want?" You can use a variety of ways to help answer that question and to provide students with a clear picture of quality. Rubrics are an important tool for describing the characteristics of a quality product or performance and should be given to students when the assignment is given. Make sure that they are written in a way that clearly describes "what you want". Involving students in developing rubrics is a great way to help them recognize proficient work. Another technique is to have students examine samples of assignments from previous years that illustrate what "good" and "not so good" look like to determine the distinguishing characteristics of each.

Students should have opportunities to self-assess and reflect.

There are several ways that students can be involved in reflecting on their own progress toward proficiency. Of course they can use the checklists and rubrics to self-assess and to assess each other. Reflection questions are another good tool for self-assessment. One that has been around for awhile that works very well is Mrs. Potter's Questions:

  • What were you expected to do?

  • What did you do well?

  • If you had to do this task over, what would you do differently?

  • What help do you need from me?

Some teachers find it helpful to have students display icons that indicate their level of understanding at critical points in a lesson. One teacher provides students with cards that show "Sunny", "Partly Cloudy", and "Cloudy". She stops at different points in the lesson and asks students to reflect on what has been taught, self-assess, and then indicate how learning is coming along by holding up the most descriptive symbol.

Nothing is more powerful than a collaborative classroom environment in which teachers and students work together and share the responsibility for making sure that learning is taking place.