Improving The Quality of Student Work Through Reflection

 Dear Teaching Friends,

School's out and a lot of us can finally get back to blogging.  Yay!  I am looking forward to time spent blog-stalking.  Leave me a comment and I'll stop by your blog! 

Teaching Blog Traffic School
I just joined Teaching Blog Traffic School, have you?  It looks like a great way to connect with other teacher bloggers.  Have a look here at TBTS.

Goals
Summer goals...  do you have them?  Are they too many to count?  One of mine is organizing my teaching files on my computer.  How do you organize your files?  By year?  By grade taught?  By subject?  I have tried many different ways and now I need to consolidate.  In the process, I thought I could share some of the things I have made over the years that you might like to use with your students.

Rubrics/Self-assessments
By now, you may have realized that I love rubrics and self-assessments. Is anyone else like me in this regard?  I like creating forms, using forms, manipulating forms and coupled with my love of assessment, means that I have a lot of those to share.   (Well after 16 years of teaching, I should have, shouldn't I?)  Here's one...

How's my work?

So, this is a rubric I used when I taught 1st grade, although it could be used for any grade.  My students were incredibly obsessed with being the first one done with assignments, sacrificing understanding and satisfaction of a job well done for timeliness.  Sound familiar?  So, to get the students to slow down, start thinking about, and evaluating their own work I would have them reflect on the quality their work and understanding, and highlight this rubric accordingly.  I would photocopy two rubrics per page, cut them in half and then after filling them out, the students would staple them to their work.  Then I would look it over and give my opinion, only after they had given theirs.

The Results
Children can be incredibly accurate and I always find it better to have students evaluate their own work first.  Students learned quickly that I valued quality or quantity, that they could let me know they didn't understand something, and that honestly looking at their work helped them to know what they needed to do better.  I firmly believe in having high expectations for students and that it is okay to help them see when their work could be improved. 

Organization

Work was collected for the week and then evaluated on Friday morning when the students would sort through their work and reflect on the quality of it.  They sorted their work into two piles.  One pile for Portfolio Worthy work and one pile to go in their Friday Take Home folder.  I had a set of cubbies (see the photo above) and I assigned one to each student. The Friday Take Home folders also remained here. The cubby held finished work.  Unfinished work stayed in a color-coded folder for each subject in their desk.  One aspect that I really liked is that I never had to worry about no-name papers and at any time and I could look over what each student had completed that day or that week at any time without rummaging through their desks.  However, most importantly, I saw a difference in the quality of work and thinking that went into their assignments. 

Changing Times - Sustainability
It is funny to think how times have changed over the years.  I now am very conscientious about the amount of paper I use.  If I were to do this again, I might have one copy laminated for each student and taped on their desk to refer to as they evaluate their assignments. 

Can any of you use this?  Do any of you do something similar?  I'd love to hear from you.

Cheers,
Kate

Handwriting Rubric

I am on a bit of an assessment kick lately. This is largely due to the fact that I am currently marking and commenting on my students' report cards.  I have always known this, but when my assessment is good, the comments I write are good (precise and individualized).  When my assessment practices are sound, I feel much more confident in the marks I give.   It sounds so simple when writing about it, but in the day to day grind so much can happen to divert our attention from getting, finding and giving proper assessments.  

Currently, I am really into self-assessments.  My students are so much more amazingly meta-cognitive and insightful when I turn the job of assessor over to them.  Which brings to my freebie for today...It is a handwriting rubric that my class and I created together.  I hope you will be able to use it and that is may benefit your students.

I don't know about you, but I can tell a student a hundred times what they need to do differently to improve their handwriting and they just don't ever do it.  However, when they are left to evaluate their handwriting, they are surprisingly knowledgeable about what they need to do in order to make their writing more readable and they actually do it.  

Handwriting Rubric 

Do you teach handwriting? I know some people feel that it very out-dated, as kids will probably type most of their communication in the future.  However, I still feel it is important to be able to write something people can read.  

Do you assess handwriting?  If so how?  I'd love to hear from you. 

Happy Thanksgiving weekend!

Kate

The Assessment Conundrum and maybe some help.

Assessment.  Ugh!  Do you find assessment a conundrum?  Taking good assessment and using it to make informed decisions in my teaching is a constant goal for me.  Last year, I took an assessment workshop and found out that I wasn’t alone.  Fitting in good assessment can sometimes take away from our precious teaching time.  Creating good assessments takes time and in many cases it comes out of our personal time.   Then there are the questions of how to use self-assessment and how to provide assessments for a variety of learning styles.

So, when we finally schedule in the proper time into our day to do a summative assessments, and we have created the perfect assessment, then we have to find time to evaluate it.  Usually, it is at this point that I run out of time (even working til 5 and coming in on the weekends). 

The last question inevitably comes… now I need to do something with the knowledge I have learned about my students’ abilities from this assessment.  How can I put what I have learned into practice?  Where can I fit it time to help those that didn’t quite show the progress I expected when I really need to move on to the next unit of study? 

Well, today, I might have found a few answers to these questions and I thought I might share what I am doing incase it might help you as you grapple with your assessment dilemmas. Click here to download an assessment sheet to use with your class.

Self-Assessment Record Sheet

So, today I am correcting my students’ self-assessments and written assessments from Unit 3 in Grade 2 Everyday Math.   I have the students’ self-assessments in front of me and I as I started to stamp them with the cute “Excellent” stamp that my kiddos love… it hits me that the way they view themselves as learners is really important information that I am just stamping, photocopying, sending home, and filing.  Isn’t there something else I could be doing with this information? 

So, I turn to the math assessment section of my plan book and I decide to record whether or not the student said they could explain it, do it themselves, or if they needed help.  It was at this point that I felt the worst… when I realized that kids actually put on the self assessment that they need help to do something, but I wasn’t going back to check in with them to see how they were going.  I wasn’t comparing if their views of themselves actually matched their skill level.  Were some children too confident, thus leading them to make mistakes? Were some too hard on themselves and not recognizing their talents?  Was there a skill that many children felt they needed help to complete?  

Analyze the results

So, my graph , pictured below, turned out like this…  I wrote the words explain, myself, and help under each of the skills in black pen.  I highlighted each help word and created small groups based on the skill.  I also calculated the totals of each to see if there was a skill that maybe I needed to continue to highlight in the future.  This was very interesting to me as I though this was an area where the students would be most confident.   I will alter the pre-made Math Messages, and Mental Math to meet my kids needs by providing more addition practice at the beginning of each math lesson, when we do our math warm-up and math message. 

Next, I realized that the test covered these same skills as the self-assessment and I put an A (adequate progress) or MP (more practice needed) or NY (not yet) in the same box.  It showed me that one student who thought she needed help could actually do all the skills, so I plan to talk with her and help build her confidence in math. 

So, what will I do?  Well, I know the theory behind the Everyday Math Program is that the skills will continue to come up, but I am going to do a few things to help my students and push their progress…

·      I am going to integrate graphing in to unit of inquiry time (Science and Social Studies) as this was an area that the kids were week in

·      As the students are working on their math boxes, I am going to meet with individuals to discuss their assessments and give them their assessments to take home.  (I will also file a copy to help me write report card comments.)

·      Another idea I have, and am not so sure how I’ll implement it, is to use this information for the students to make their own Math goals. 

Plan your next steps...

If you have figured out answers to these questions, in your own way, I would love to hear from you.  Or even if you hadn’t, I would love to hear about how you implement the teaching, learning, assessment cycle in your own class!

I hope you enjoy the assessment sheet and let me know if you would like it in a word document to alter for your class.  

Happy teaching,

Kate