Blog Week of April 9, 2012
Giving Your Students Clear Feedback Helps Them Grow
I am convinced that the secret to motivating students is to stay in close touch with them about how they are doing.
I created this exercise for our seminar on assessment.
Try it yourself.
The Birdhouse Exercise
You are going to build a bird house.The assessment of your bird house will be a simple one: if a bird or bird family uses it. That would be the ultimate successful evaluation. If you are successful every aspect of your bird house should be a benefit to the bird(s) that use it.
Turn away from this page for a minute and list your ideas of the benefits. Then turn back and look at some of these.
Anticipated Benefits
It should be constructed for strength.
If should appeal to the birds you want to attract.
It should suit their needs.
It should be in the right place for them to find it.
It should be in the right time for them.
Would these considerations affect the way you built it? What kind of information would you have to know about the birds you wanted to attract?
Next, substitute “You are going to build a birdhouse” with these words: “You are creating an assessment for something you are going to teach.”
Consider using the birdhouse benefits listed to create the assessment, any of yours as well as mine.
The assessment should be strong but doable.
It should be something that would appeal to your students in the doing of it.
It should suit their needs.
It should be given at the right time and place for them.
List what you know about your students then construct an assessment that will be right and rigorous for them. If you knew the answers to those things and had done all of the above, would that influence your decision on how to create the assessment? The answer is clearly, yes. You see, your instruction strategy should come first. It should be your guide. If you are absolutely sure in your own mind what learning results you want, your assessment choice will improve your teaching quality.
Many teachers do it in the opposite way.They decide what they are going to teach, then they create the assessment.
Look at what James Popham says about how the instruction and assessment relate: “A good test tells the teacher what instruction the student needs. You have to build tests with instruction in mind. You have to ask yourself, How could this really be taught? And you build tests in such a way that they capture worthwhile skills, but capture them in a way that you inform you on how you should be teaching.”
And every assessment should be a benefit to students.
Think of three kinds of assessments, each requiring higher levels of learning:
What if you designed all three kinds depending on how the students were developing?
Selected—Knowing it the way the experts do. (multiple choice, true or false, fill in the blanks, give me the details.) This is all cognitive.
Responded—Knowing it in a way the student can express it, in her/his own words. This value oriented.
Adapted— Knowing it well enough to integrate it into their real lives. This is future use. This is the real performance.
If you are using all three kinds you will see growth emerging.
