Within this course we have been
discussing the idea of transitioning from teacher-centered practices to those
that are student-centered. Doing this gives your students a great amount of power
and say in their educational experience than ever before and for some students
this will be a completely new idea to adjust to. While I believe that these
ideas are innovative and beneficial for all students, there is a certain amount
of caution to be taken when attempting to enact this within your classroom. You
need to first get to know your students and what their capacities are and then
you need to teach them the skills that they need to engage in these
student-centered/driven practices. For example, engaging your students in peer
assessment and self-assessment can be effective when it is seen by the educator
as an important part of the learning process as opposed to a means to assign
grades (Drake, Reid & Holohon, 2014). This is an example of employing
assessment as learning (Drake et al., 2014).
Peer Assessment is
effective because as students learn to assess their peers they are ultimately
building their assessment literacy and the ability to self-assess (Drake et
al., 2014). The ability to self-assess is a component of metacognition,
reflection, evaluation, and goal setting: all are important 21st
century skill (Ontario Ministry of Education, 2007). Students need to be able
to reflect on and assess their own work, work ethic and ideas, in order to be successful
within the school system as well as within the broader working world. There are
several opportunities for self and peer assessment to occur. For example, journaling
or learning log, blogs, rubrics, checklists, and exemplars (Drake et al.,
2014). This can be very effective when used within writing in order to help
shape strong and proficient writers that can accurately assess their peers
writing as well as their own. In the following video by Georgia Standards they
discuss peer assessment to create strong writers in a second grade classroom. Despite the benefits that having your students engage in peer assessment, as an educator you cannot simply throw your students into this exercise. As we have seen modeled in the Georgia Standards videos, students will need to learn how to be assessment literate (Drake et al., 2014). They need to be taught how to assess and this can be done by co-creating a rubric as a class or turning a ministry rubric into student friendly terms (Drake et al., 2014). To strengthen their understanding, students could apply the rubric to examples of different levels of work to learn how to recognize different levels of work and indicators of success (Drake et al., 2014). Also the students need to be taught to give appropriate feedback. This can be done by facilitating feedback as a class on an example of work. This was what the second grade teacher, Luz Montanez, in the Georgia Standards video did with her class. Another way this can be done is by providing students with sentence prompts to guide their feedback (Drake et al., 2014). Sentence starters like: “I was confused when…” or “I liked it when you…” can help students to keep their feedback consistent and meaningful for their peers (Drake et al., 2014). A guide involving this strategy is posted below. In addition, another method for guiding students in peer-assessment involves ‘The Ladder of Feedback’. This image is also posted below. This ladder is intended to guide students through four steps of peer assessment. You can learn more about this tool and how to use it in your classroom here: http://www.studentsatthecenter.org/resources/student-centered-assessment-guide-peer-assessment.
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Retrieved from: www.teachingessentials.co.uk
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References
Brook, G., & Andrade, H. (2013). Student-centered Assessment Guide: Peer Assessment. Retrieved November 4, 2015, from http://www.studentsatthecenter.org/resources/student-centered-assessment-guide-peer-assessment.
Drake, S. M., Reid, J. L. & Koholon, W. (2014). Interweaving Curriculum and Classroom Assessment: Engaging the 21st Century Learner. Oxford University Press. pp. x - 21.
GeorgiaStandards.Org. (2015, September 9). Peer Assessment – Building Student Capacity in Writing [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQxgbHDeOaA.
Nicole, you did a great job on your final blog post and I found the topic to be very interesting and relevant in today’s education. I really liked how you focused on peer and self-assessment as they are an integral part of the learning process. Personally, I believe self-awareness is essential when it comes to learning how to deal with experiences and to grow as a person. This is similar to the idea of self-assessment in education which should, in my opinion, be incorporated into more of students’ assignments. Self-assessment would give students the chance think about their efforts towards the work and how well they understand the material and then give themselves a grade or score. Furthermore, they could elaborate or provide reasons as to why they think they deserve a certain mark on an assignment. This can be a really helpful tool for teachers because if there is disagreement between the teacher’s score and the score the student gives him/herself then this is an opportunity for both parties to discuss their reasoning and come to a solution, whether that be the teacher understanding the student’s perspective and giving them a higher grade or by suggesting specific ways the student can improve for future assignments. This gives the student an understanding of their strengths and weaknesses related to different types of assignments and allows them to start setting goals to slowly improve and make progress. This will not only help them in their academics, but can be applied in other areas of their lives as well (hobbies, relationships, jobs, etc.). I loved the idea of co-creating a rubric as a class that you brought up in the post. I think this is an excellent way for the teachers to give students a voice and understand things from a student’s perspective so that the assessment is fair and includes different styles of learning. Also, it can motivate students to work hard to achieve their own success criteria and goals as a learner. As a future teacher, I will definitely be using this strategy in my classroom as well as the sentence prompts for peer assessment that is specific, constructive, and meaningful. The only question I have is in regards to peer assessment: do you think it can become unfair and unreliable due to the fact that students may give their close friends high scores and then others they do not particularly get along with or like lower scores? If this is a problem, do we get rid of peer-assessment entirely or can we address the issue in some way so that everyone is able to provide meaningful, constructive feedback to their peers regardless of whether they are friends or not?
ReplyDeleteNicole, I enjoyed you blog a lot and because student-centered learning is something I find interesting, but was never truly sure how to do it. We are told that student-centered learning is a good approach, however, like you said it has to be taught to students to work. I am glad you were able to incorporate ways to do this through self-assessment with students. I also enjoyed your video and being able to hear from actual teachers that use the student-centered approach and self-assessment/peer-assessment to see how it actually works in a class. Similarly to you I also did not experience much self-assessment in my own education and I think that it would be very useful for students. By using self-assessment students can understand what mistakes they made and how to improve it. I remember when I would get teachers feedback on my work it was hard to understand and if students can explain for themselves what they need to improve on its much better for their growth and learning. I remember in school I did have peer-assessments and I think they were very helpful because you got to help your peers improve their work and also understand how the assessment is done. I think we do need to involve students more in the educational process rather than just teachers being the head of the class telling them what is right and wrong. Students will learn and grow more if they are able to realize their own errors and fix them. Do you think there are other ways to make a classroom student-centered? Also, do you think student-centered classrooms could work in every grade or is it more suitable for older or younger students?
ReplyDeleteNicole,
ReplyDeleteWhat a great final blog! This topic is important as I believe that giving students’ agency and choice in the classroom will allow them to have some say in what they learn about and have power in their education as a whole. This is vital so that children stay engaged and motivated to learn. Last year, my 8P15 instructor told us that when she gave children a choice in her classroom, they were unsure as to how to respond. This was because they hadn’t had options in the classroom before. She had to be very clear in letting the students know that giving the class choices was important to her as it would create a stronger learning environment. In relation to peer assessment, I completely agree that it allows students to reflect on the criteria that is expected of them on assignments and give their peers useful feedback. This way, both the student assessing and their peers can improve upon their work for next time. In my educational experience, I remember editing my peers’ work. This is also important as it gave me and my peers a chance to receive feedback and check if we met all of the criteria before handing it into the teacher for a final mark. I do think that it is important to give exemplars of how to appropriately assess work, like the teacher did in the video. Doing this at the beginning of the year will allow scaffolding to occur so that students can begin to understand how to conduct peer assessment and, eventually, will be able to do this without teacher assistance. I really liked your idea of sentence starters so that students know what they are looking for in other students’ work. Your idea about co-creating success criteria and a rubric with students is a great one as students will understand the criteria clearly and can then assess their peers properly. It also gives them agency within the classroom. Finally, I loved your images and videos because they gave me a clear idea about how to use peer assessment in the classroom and how to scaffold the skill so students learn how to do it on their own. One thing I would suggest is to properly give attribution to your videos and images! One question I have about giving students the power is: Does the amount of power that should be given to students vary depending on their age? How much power and choice should we give students who are younger?