SOS - Student's Own Self-Assessment

Dear Barbara Bear,

We are excited about having you on our staff as well. It is great that you are trying learner centers in your classroom. This is a great way for the children to learn and for you to be able to assess/observe others or work with groups while the other children are occupied. Keep up the good work and I hope that these suggestions will help you.

Student assessment is a common problem with first year teachers, as well as, veteran teachers. The first rule of thumb that you need to remember is to train yourself and the children on how to do the assessment. By teaching them to self assess you are involving them more so in their learning. Self assessment is a tool that they can use to help them see what they are learning. It also helps you in evaluating what areas of strengths they have but also their weaknesses. An important thing to remember is to not be "Super"teacher and try to do everything at once. Allow yourself time to get accustomed to using one form of assessment effectively before you go to the next form. It can be overloading on you and will only frustrate you to the point of not wanting to do it.

There are many options of self assessment that they children can learn to do in the centers. The most popular is the rubric. This is a great tool of assessment for the younger children because you allow them to see what is expected in their work in order for it to exceed, meet, or not meet the standards/skills that you are focusing on. Just be sure that when you are developing your rubric that your descriptors are carried throughout the format of your rubric. This is a common mistake made when developing rubrics. You can get more information in the book "Why Didn't I Learn this in College?" on page 165/166.

Another form that works well in the lower levels is journal entries. This can be as simple as a student commenting on an experiment they did or ways that they could solve a problem in math. Journals are a creative way for the students to express and share their ideas with the other students as well. They are used to writing in journals so there is not much training for you. You will need to design some open-ended questions that they could possibly answer that would help you determine if they accomplished the standard(s) that you were evaluating.

Another great way to help them self assess is through "Sort Cards". These are cards that you have made before hand or ones that they have top make to show different processes such as scientific process or historical events through time. These can be found on pages 93 - 95 in the book "Why Didn't I Learn this in College?".

The last assessment tools that you could try are Performance Assessment Task List and Checklist. These are both good low stakes assessment tools. The main thing to remember with these tools are to give them to the students before hand. These tools need to guide the students throughout the process. They both use a point scale and need to focus on the content knowledge needed to demonstrate mastery of those skills and work habits that students need to be successful. Examples of these can be found on page 155 and 166 in the same book. Remember to teach them the assessment first through modeling otherwise their assessment will be faulty.

Your mentor..........David Kirkland