Discussing Assessment

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Permalink Reply by Brian Dunlap on December 21, 2008 at 4:59pm

Best thing I ever did in the area of assessment was to stop worrying over "right" answers. When I allowed my kids to explain their choices on a multiple choice test, for instance, I discovered that they knew a hell of a lot more than I would have thought. Similarly, when checking homework aloud in class, I stopped saying "right" or "wrong" and just asked "does everyone agree?" Really helped the kids build confidence and learn from each other.

I suspect something similar is at work with comments. Do your students have any stake in the comments you give? Do they care what you think of in response to their work? I used to labor over comments on a "final" paper, then recognized that they barely get read and certainly don't make much difference in the kids' thinking. My wife, teaching college freshman comp, experimented with the comment function in MS Word (a long time ago, when it was still pretty clumsy) and required the students to solicit and respond to comments from classmates. That's the best parallel I can think of to what real writers do. How could you encourage your students to interact with each other or with you in that way? Especially given the insane student-teacher ratios we so often face.

Best book I ever read for thinking about assessment is John Holt's "Why Children Fail" from the '60s.

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Permalink Reply by Dan Mindich on February 9, 2009 at 4:24pm

Yeah, I like Brian's idea about front loading responses or more actively having students react to the responses we give. I worked with a teacher in Vermont who had the students catalog and respond to the comments he or peers gave them. I thought that was a good idea, but never did it myself. What I did do which was great, was assign graded rough drafts. When I taught American Studies with my friend John Cheever, we used to grade their rough drafts for major papers. Before we started that, the strong students would do solid rough drafts but the struggling kids would mail it in for HW credit or not do it at all. When we switched to making it a 100 point assignment, we got way better work, we could give them feedback, and in the end they produced much better final projects. Our grading system was pretty simple. We basically told them that we were giving them the grade they would get if the paper were handed in as a final draft plus ten points. So, if your rough draft would get you a 75 as a final draft, you would get an 85 for the rough draft. What was great about that was it also told them that if they didn't change anything they would get a 75, which most of them didn't want.

Brian Dunlap said:

Best thing I ever did in the area of assessment was to stop worrying over "right" answers. When I allowed my kids to explain their choices on a multiple choice test, for instance, I discovered that they knew a hell of a lot more than I would have thought. Similarly, when checking homework aloud in class, I stopped saying "right" or "wrong" and just asked "does everyone agree?" Really helped the kids build confidence and learn from each other.

I suspect something similar is at work with comments. Do your students have any stake in the comments you give? Do they care what you think of in response to their work? I used to labor over comments on a "final" paper, then recognized that they barely get read and certainly don't make much difference in the kids' thinking. My wife, teaching college freshman comp, experimented with the comment function in MS Word (a long time ago, when it was still pretty clumsy) and required the students to solicit and respond to comments from classmates. That's the best parallel I can think of to what real writers do. How could you encourage your students to interact with each other or with you in that way? Especially given the insane student-teacher ratios we so often face.

Best book I ever read for thinking about assessment is John Holt's "Why Children Fail" from the '60s.

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