Building meaningful student engagement in assessment
Key Question: Will co-constructing criteria contribute to increased engagement in assessment?
After providing student friendly outcomes, the next step would be to establish criteria to measure the degree of understanding. Assessment in Social Studies classes can be formative or summative, it can be based on written response assignment or multiple choice tests. Most of these assignments are designed to elements of curricular outcomes where students are usually presented with a task or question they are to respond to. Asking these questions in "student friendly" language is not radically different that the traditional approaches to assessment, I hope to see if there is a better way to engage students in the process.
Our schools assessment plan incorporates the indicators of A/Exemplary, B/Proficient, C/Adequate, and D/Limited. As a teacher it is part of our job to define and recognize those indicators to assess student understanding of learning outcomes. However, are student perceptions of quality the same as a teacher? What is the difference between a students perception of what exemplary/proficient/adequate compared to a teacher?
With these perceptions in mind, a colleague and I worked to create exemplars of adequate, proficient, and exemplary answers of curricular questions using our experience from previous classes. We then distributed those exemplars to allow small groups of students to sort them into the three categories. Once organized, groups created criteria that they felt contributed to a particular response. Below are some examples of student created criteria.
One way for students to contribute to their own assessment is to build their own criteria for assessment. If students understand what they are expected to accomplish they are more likely to meet their own expectations. To take it a step further, if students are engaged in developing their own expectations they may be more likely to exceed their own expectations.
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