Self-assessments have become increasingly popular tools because they involve students in monitoring their own progress. Self-assessments can range in structure from pre-made checklists and questionnaires to student-generated reflections in a science journal (“What is the most important idea I learned today?”). The latest research in cognition and learning tells us that students need self-assessment opportunities daily to reflect on what they have learned. In addition to consolidating knowledge, self-assessments encourage students to reflect on the learning process itself: “What don’t I understand?” “How am I sure that I actually do understand?” “What successful strategies did I use as I learned?”
In the spirit of self-assessment, many middle-grades teachers are choosing to provide their students with the same scoring guides that they use to evaluate performance or written assessments, and are requiring students to score themselves (as in the glue factory example above). Many teachers find that when students play a central role in the assessment process, they (1) become more aware of the features that constitute high-quality work, (2) make more realistic judgments about their work, and (3) set goals for their own improvement and exercise greater control over reaching those goals. Because performance criteria are out in the open, the grading process is no longer a mystery; students can see exactly what they need to do, and they can take themselves through the same evaluation process that their teachers use.
Many teachers are also finding success with self-assessment as they encourage students to record and then revisit their “pre-instructional ideas” (as in the concept map example above). Teachers can ask students to articulate how their thinking has changed over time, and can then grade students on their reflections as well as the revised content. To get more ideas for pre-instructional assessments that can be revisited over time, visit the written assessment section.
The following vignettes are fictionalized classroom accounts of real assessments from real middle school curricula.
Concept Map
A seventh-grade classroom is starting a new World in Motion engineering design unit. Mobility Toys, Inc. (a fictitious company), has issued a request for proposals; the company is looking for new designs for gear-driven toys. “Let’s find out what you already know about gears,” Mr. Porter says to his class. In their science journals, students develop a concept map for “gears,” including ideas about what they look like, what they are used for, and what kinds of machines might use them. This concept map exercise gives students an opportunity to “take stock”—What do we already know? What do we want to find out? Students will revisit their concept maps throughout the unit to assess how their knowledge has grown and changed.
Learn more about this example of a concept map, a pre-instruction assessment from the World in Motion curriculum.
Embedded Reflections
This September, Ms. Jeffers has resolved to do things differently, and the SEPUP / SALI curriculum is helping her do it. Since the first week of school, she has worked doggedly with her eighth-grade students on cooperative group skills, an essential component of her investigation-based classroom. She takes every opportunity she can to draw explicit attention to positive and productive group interactions. Today, students are working in groups to investigate how simple inherited traits are passed from parents to their offspring and then to the next generation. Two imaginary creatures, one with a blue tail and the other with an orange tail, have produced a new generation of critters with only blue tails. Two of these blue-tailed creatures have mated to produce a third generation—some with blue tails and others with orange tails.
Here’s the challenge for Ms. Jeffers’ students: explain what happened. If generation 2 has no orange tails, then how could generation 3 have orange-tailed critters? Students argue and debate in their small groups, and try to model their hypotheses with orange and blue disks. Before the end of class, Ms. Jeffers asks students to complete a self-evaluation form to rate their group’s performance on this task. Students are required to give specific examples of instances when group members listened to each other, managed the task efficiently, and made compromises. In the weeks since school began, Ms. Jeffers has seen the positive impact of putting this kind of evaluation in the students’ own hands; they have become more aware of their actions and take more responsibility for their own improvement.
Learn more about this example of an embedded reflection, an embedded assessment from the SEPUP / SALI curriculum.
Post-Unit Reflections
The ARIES light and color unit has come to an end for Mr. Ricanati’s seventh-grade class. They have viewed the world through colored filters, investigated mirror reflections, used prisms to produce spectrums, and drawn connections between refraction and lenses. Before the class moves on, Mr. Ricanati wants his students to reflect on their performances over the course of the whole unit. He passes out self-assessment sheets, and students respond to questions such as: In which exploration did you learn the most and why? How would you rate yourself on the following skills? What do you still want to know more about? Mr. Ricanati is interested to see how closely his students’ self-assessments and his own judgments of their performances align.
Learn more about this example of post-unit reflections, a post-instruction assessment from the ARIES curriculum.
Scoring Rubrics
Since the start of their SEPUP / IEY unit, eighth-grader Theo and three of his classmates have been busy. They are developing a plan for building and operating a glue factory on a fictitious island. Though the island is sorely in need of an economic boon, the island’s residents are pressuring all potential industries to limit environmental damage as much as possible. After testing and refining their own recipe for glue, Theo’s team is now considering several essential questions: How will we obtain and process raw materials? How will we find and use sources of energy? How will we dispose of waste and handle transportation in and out of the factory? Based on their discussions, the group is preparing an environmental impact presentation that addresses the benefits and risks of their factory proposal. Because this assignment calls upon a diverse menu of skills, Theo and his classmates will be assessed with three separate scoring rubrics: one for Group Interaction, one for Communication, and one for Evidence and Tradeoffs. Theo’s group constantly refers to these criteria as they work. After their presentation, they will score themselves, and can then compare Ms. Bartlett’s scores with their own. To encourage accurate self-assessment, Ms. Bartlett provides extra points to students whose self-assessments closely align with hers.
Learn more about this example of scoring rubrics, a post-instruction assessment from the SEPUP / IEY curriculum.
For more about Theo and the glue factory, see "Scoring Rubrics" in the Observations, Interviews, and Discussions section and "Presentation/Demonstration" in the Performance Assessments section.
