Assessing Assessment

Continuing my reactions to Dawn Latta Kirby and Darren Crovitz’s book Inside Out: Strategies forTeaching Writing (for another example, check out my post on the fiveparagraph essay), I wanted to talk about the contentious topic of assessment.  Kirby and Crovitz discuss this at length, devoting an entire chapter to the issue.  They offer up many ideas on how to alter and adjust your assessment of student work, and I’d like to reflect on these ideas with particular emphasis on the strategies I would like to try in my class.

First, it is important to note that these assessment ideas pertain to the assessment of writing, but I think that many of their strategies would apply well to other areas of instruction.  In particular, I appreciate the emphasis on what is best practice for student learning.  I think that all too often, we as teachers design amazing and engaging units that provide students ample opportunity to learn only to grade the end product in a way that has no ultimate benefit to the student.  Inside Out works against this end result primarily by suggesting that we 1) deemphasize grades (p. 221) and 2) involve students in their own assessments (p. 241).  I want to focus on these two elements because I think that they encapsulate my own goals as a teacher.

First, by deemphasizing grades, the focus shifts to the process of learning.  As a student, I highly valued my grades and I got really good at “playing the game of school” where I would figure out what I needed to do to get an A rather than focusing on actually learning course materials.  This did not impact me much in the classes I was truly interested in, but those that I did not naturally gravitate toward ended up being courses I scored well in but learning nothing.  I think that it is safe to assume that not all of our students are going to naturally love writing.  Therefore, it seems especially important that we emphasize progress and process in their writing.  By taking the sole grade away from the final result, you reward students who work steadily to improve their work while simultaneously disincentivizing those last minute papers.

The idea of deemphasizing grades ties in nicely with involving students in their own assessments.  As I mentioned in a previous post, one of my biggest goals as an educator is for my students to be able to assess their own writing.  If they are able to do this, they have mastered the understanding of what makes a piece of writing good.  This deemphasizes grades because the students will not be looking to me (and the grade I give) to know if their paper has value.  Further, I think that students should be involved in determining what makes a good paper.  By soliciting input from students on what they think is most important in evaluating written work, not only will they know what you expect from them in their work, but they will also increase their understanding of what constitutes good writing.

Ultimately, I think that our grading process needs to be reflective of our teaching practice.  If we teach our students to be critical thinkers and value their thoughts and opinions in class discussions, but take off more points for surface errors than we reward for actual content, the message students receive from that grade serves to undo the good work we have done in class.  Instead, by working with students to develop their writing ability and the grading criteria, they will see the value of their work and the process of learning.

Teacher resource: Check out this great graphic on ways to engage/redirect students who are off task! I love the variety of ideas, giving you plenty of options to tailor for each student.