I really enjoy Formative Assessment! It feels so much more genuine than “Summative Assessments”, since the feedback is immediate, actionable, and (ideally) involves student input. My most recent foray into Formative Assessment involved having students not only grade each other's POW (Problem of the Week) Writeups but also critique and comment on them directly. I had them ignore the Rubrics for their commenting sessions since I did not want them to align their comments with the rubrics, but instead give genuine feedback and responses based on what they were seeing, not on what I wanted to see. Then they graded each other. After this I had students go through the comments made on their POWs, and make their own corrections and comments. Finally, I had the students give each other a grade based on the rubric, and grade themselves. The next piece of this Formative Assessment is my own grading of their work, which includes comments, suggestions, corrections, etc. The final piece, which we will be working on next week is for students to take these comments and suggestions and rework and refine their POWs. I am excited to see how this all plays out!
The biggest difficulty in the implementation of this assessment lay in the fact that some students simply did not complete their POWs, or put in such little care that it was all but impossible to assess their work reasonably. It is incredibly frustrating when students do not do their work, especially when that work is required to participate in class. It is a self compounding problem, that the students who do the work get the best feedback, and are therefore able to make the best revisions. I do not have a good solution for this. However, it is somewhat self-regulating, since the students who cannot participate because they did not do the work get to read others work and see what is good or bad and become the judges themselves. This makes the lack of participation fairly obvious, and in some ways allows students who have done the work to not get punished by doing more work, but rather forces the students who did not do the work to participate and engage. I think moving forward I will continue to use this self/peer critique/assessment process. I like it a lot, and the feedback is quick and easy and does not add significantly to my workload, but enables students to try and understand better what is expected of them and act on that knowledge. However, I need to find a good way to get all students to turn in their work on time so that this process works more fully for all students, and does not continue to widen the gap between the “high achievers” and the “low motivation” students. Perhaps I could be framing the submission differently, but without taking away the seriousness of the need for students to come to class with a submission. “You will be submitting a final DRAFT of this assignment, but we will critique and comment on these in class, and you will have an opportunity to act on those critiques and comments in order to raise your grade on the assignment.” I do not like using grades as a motivator, however… How else can I inspire some of my students to participate besides trying to get them to understand the importance of problem-solving skills, explaining skills, etc. in the real world. Perhaps I can have them explain the importance themselves, and give them FORMATIVE FEEDBACK on their thoughts from their peers, themselves, and myself! BOOM!
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Julian SpringerMath Department - Animas High School Archives
December 2019
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