Self-Assessment as Critical Skill: Formative Assessment as a Stepping Stone

I am painfully aware that helping students to be able to self-assess is a slow task. On the other hand, I realize how critical this skill is as a lifelong skill. Unless students can self-assess, they will not be able to improve on their own. I certainly do not want my students dependent on me for the rest of their lives to make sure that they are “correct”. I want them to be able to determine for themselves what they are doing and how well it helps them to get to their desired goal. They should be empowered to make their own decisions about the things they do. They do need our help in developing from very structured self-assessments  (Right or Wrong for lower level answers) to evaluating their decisions without any given criteria. Students need to transition through this process.

Formative assessment provides a wonderful stepping stone to self-assessment. As students learn to assess others, they learn what is important about the learning, how that learning can be demonstrated, and  how to identify and implement formative feedback.  They develop the skill to objectively look at their own work. They understand  that they have the techniques to improve.  As one of my English students said, ” I’m learning to look at my own paper as I do when I peer review another student’s paper.”

How do you help your students to be able to self-assess? Do you use formative assessment as a stepping stone?

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Your Students, is available through Eye on Education.

Also, my  book,  Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment, is available through Eye on Education.

Advertisement

Wiki- Collaborative Notes Instead of Individual Ones

My classes use a wiki.  If the classes are sections of the same course, they share the same wiki. For example, my 8, 9 and 12:30 classes are all Writing and Research so I group them together on the wiki.  I  have been having students from each class take class notes and post them to the wiki.  As I read the notes on the same classroom  topic material, I notice  that although each student included the critical information, each student picked different things to emphasize more.

Now that students have gotten use to note taking, we are moving onto collaborate notes. The first person posts  his/her notes and writes his/her name.  Then when a person from another section of the same course logs in to post his/her notes, the second person reads what the first has written and adds to the notes or clarifies information; he or she adds her name where she added info.  Likewise, the third person from another section does the same and adds examples if there exist.  The quality of information has increased drastically. The initial notes get transformed into a complete set of notes that will help anyone who is absent.  The notes serve as a great reminder of what we covered with specific examples. The wiki notes demonstrate that students collaborate to advance everyone’s learning.

How do your students collaborate?

My new book,  Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment, is available through Eye on Education.

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Your Students, is available through Eye on Education.

Let’s Hear it for the Power of Technology! LOL!

I know of a person who does not have any technology in his room accept for a 70s looking overhead.  One day he decided to walk around  his institute and see how the teachers who had technology in their room was using it.  9/10 rooms were using the “elmo” type device to show a handout, a passage from a book, etc.  They were using their fully Internet capable machine as a modern day opaque projector which would project the image of anything put inside it. The one other person was showing a DVD.  How much money has been invested in technology so that people can use technology from the past such as a DVD player or an opaque projector!   Educational institutes need to take a lead in helping their teachers to use the many educational resources that are available.  Perhaps at each faculty meeting there can be a five  minute demonstration  of various ways to use technology to improve student learning in powerful ways.

What does a walk around your school reveal about technology use and student learning?

My new book,  Successful Student Writing Through Formative Assessment, is available through Eye on Education.

My book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Your Students, is available through Eye on Education.

Improving How We Use Wikis for Better Student Learning

Here are some handout notes for the session:

Harry Grover Tuttle, Ed. D.
Instructor, writer, consultant
harry.g.tuttle   at   gmail.com
Blog: https://eduwithtechn.wordpress.com

Purpose: To improve students’ learning through changing how we use wikis in our classroom.

Formative Assessment Focus

Improvements:

• 1. Teach the mechanics

  2. Identify the learning goal/purpose

  3. Explain the quality of responses

  4. Use students’ notes

  5. Organize the class

  6. Provide in-class and out-of-class resources by learning style

  7. Avoid common web topics

  8. Make learning “collective wisdom” instead of  “collective stupidity”
     

  9. Have exemplary work and reactions to the exemplars
     

  10. Build in real and varied interaction

  11. Build on the past

  12. Make group work transparent

  13. Have a student-help-student section

  14. Carefully use outside experts and other classes

  15. Co-create with students

A wiki has been created for you to add to  http://wikiforbetterlearning.pbwiki.com/

A mini version of the presentation is available at slideshare

Dr. Tuttle’s book, Formative Assessment: Responding to Students which is available from Eye-on-Education includes numerous ways that technology can be used in formative assessment.

Public Performance and Students’ Learning

I watched a seven year who played his violin at a Farmers’ Market. About 100 people listened as he did two songs. When I asked his father about this performance, he stated that his son’s violin teacher insisted that all of his students play in public. These students are to watch the audience as they play to determine what moves the audience. So the son plays out once a week.

I wonder how often we have our students play outside the school to demonstrate their skills to the public and to listen to their response. How do our social studies students demonstrate their skills to the community? What do our math students do to showcase their learning and get reactions from the people in their town?

Twitter – Meaningful or Trivial -Up to the Writer

I recently read an article saying that twitter is another example of technology dumming down education. It stressed that nothing important/worthwhile can be said in 140 characters. I disagree; much can be said in those few characters. More important than the word limit is the intent of the writer. Some writers tell about their daily existence while others try to share with others. Here are some of my tweets:

Do we evaluate students’ technology based experiences on their excitement, instead of their in-depth learning?

Do teachers give online pretest/survey before a new concept? If not, then they teach with blinders on,not aware of students.

What do students remember about writing paragraphs? Spelling, grammar & punctuation! Not the writing process, not expressing ideas. Oouch!

I’ve noticed concept maps often limit students’ thinking. They fill in the boxes & then stop thinking. Maps are starting points

Weight lost program says man lost 100 lbs (“results not typical”). Are our students’ technology-based learning typical of higher learning?

If teaching is to impart (or stuff in) knowledge & educate is to nourish (or pull out), which do we use technology for?

My twitter is http://twitter.com/HarryGTuttle.

What do you use Twitter for?

Why write in an English course?

I believe in purposeful writing.  I have trouble when a course is just an exercise.  Often many writing courses have students do paragraph patterns such as narrative and description even when the students will probably never write in these literary styles.  When students are in a business specific college, they need writing that corresponds to the type writing they will do in their occupations. Reading great literature and copying its writing style probably is not a valuable life skill for these students.

What type writing do your students do? Is it real life writing or is literary exercises?  Do they ever send their writing to a person outside of the school to response to? Are they writing for the 21st century or for a traditional century old theory of writing?