Latest / New Teacher Talk / Ep 190: Meaningful Assessment Strategies That Connect Learning to Real-World Impact

Transcript

Ep 190: Meaningful Assessment Strategies That Connect Learning to Real-World Impact · New Teacher Talk

My name is Jacqueline Sounheim, NBCT,
and I am a director at the National Board for Professional
Teaching Standards.
And today I'm going to talk about meaningful assessment.
It is something that I am so passionate about.
I will tell you a little bit later on about a project that
I did with my students that I still think about today,
even though it was almost, which I can't believe,
10 years ago.
And in a world where it seems like there are endless
standardized tests,
it's evident that both teachers and students are craving
that real world experience.
We want to know that what we're teaching is going to help
students in the real world.
And students want to know that what they're learning in the
classroom can be applied to the things that they do in
their everyday.
So you're going to leave with two strategies that will
hopefully allow you to craft assessments that will impact
your students and classroom in a relevant manner.
First,
engage your students in a conversation about their current
school community.
This is going to bring in those skills and tools that you
teach in your classroom to life.
So maybe pose a couple of questions.
They can write about it first, share with the partner,
and then bring it to a whole group.
But ask them,
what problems exist in their school communities?
What innovation is needed to solve a problem?
What are they passionate about?
Engage these students in this conversation.
And then as you plan your unit,
look at the skills that you will be teaching.
Now combine it.
Take the conversations that you had with your students,
or if they're a bit younger,
you might need to do a little bit of research on your own
and take those skills that you want to teach them in that
unit and create your assessment.
So, for example,
let's say you're teaching a unit on argument to juniors.
You have this conversation with them and clearly the most
important thing to juniors other than college applications
and you know things like that is that they've just started
driving and they might even have a car at school.
Now, I don't know if this is just my own experience,
but many of the parking lots that I've been in are
impossible to navigate.
We're stuck in traffic jams.
Students are upset.
Teachers are trying to get out.
Everyone is just in a jumble.
So you have this conversation.
Students are super, super passionate about it.
You're trying to show them how they meet or exceed skills
and argumentation.
So you build your assessment around this conversation and
around those skills.
And as you are building your unit,
you can plan time for students to investigate outside.
You can have them talk to contractors in the community.
And we all know that many of us are so scared to talk to
people on the phone now.
They can speak to administration to gather evidence for
their arguments.
There are so many ways you can take this.
And you can even plan your unit where you carve out maybe a
particular class period or a couple minutes at the
beginning of each class to have them work on this evidence
gathering.
And then you have them go at it.
You have them create, whether it be a project, a speech,
a podcast on how they would solve the problem of the
parking lot jam at their school.
Believe me,
you're going to get students who want to talk about what
they care about.
Another key strategy to meaningful assessment is allowing
students to have a say in the rubric.
Okay,
now the reality is I know this can't be done in every instance.
However,
even if you can't manipulate a standardized rubric,
let students explain in their own words what the success
criteria would look like.
Along the way,
you can have students journal about their progress to
meeting certain goals or skills.
Have them show you evidence of meeting or exceeding.
Explain to them and reiterate this time and time again that
they can also explain and show why that skill might still
be emerging.
And that then can give you guidance on how to best support
them moving forward.
And it also gives them time to grow and it gives them time
to reflect on their own work.
So while you may not be able to create a rubric from
scratch, like I know many of us would love to do,
having students look at the rubric and break down exactly
what those boxes mean to them and the assessment is going
to be key.
The main takeaway from engaging them in the learning and
not just the grading process is that they have a sense of
ownership around their skill development.
Now,
one of my favorite things that I ever did as a teacher,
and this will give you from beginning to end,
how I created a meaningful assessment for my students.
I was teaching a world cultures class.
The final assessment,
we were able to manipulate it a little bit,
but it had to focus on certain skills.
And I went to my department chair and I said,
I understand that a lot of my colleagues are going to be
approaching the assessment in this way.
I would like to do it in this way.
And this was a time where we were really striving to
provide a lot of project-based learning and we were trying
to create ways for the students to really engage in their
communities.
So I came with the plan to my department chair.
I said, this is how I think I want to do it.
You have any feedback?
Does this align with how I'm assessing these skills?
And she said, I love it.
Try it.
If it works, great.
If it doesn't, then we look at it, you know,
in a different way next year.
I was very lucky to be in such a supportive environment for
this particular, you know, risk.
So what I did was I carved out a little bit of time each
week for my students to work on this assessment because
this was going to be their final.
So I had a pretty long runway to have them work on this.
So the first thing that I had students do was create a
proposal for something that they wanted the whole class to
work on.
So it needed to solve a problem within their community.
It needed to have a very clear, tangible outcome.
And it needed to have parts within the proposal where all
students could engage in different parts of the planning,
the preparation, the organizing, you know,
the evidence collecting, all the things.
So students held a proposal fair and at the end they got to
vote on, and this was all anonymous,
they got to vote on which proposal they wanted to work on
together as a class.
And, you know, we had a lot of different things.
I used the parking lot example.
That was one of the problems that they wanted to solve.
That was not the winner,
but they were very passionate about it.
But this was a time where we were having a lot of
conversations as a school community on mental health and
ensuring that there was support for mental health within
the student body.
And so one of my students crafted a proposal on doing a
mental health walk run for the community,
and the proceeds would all go to NAMI in DuPage.
And so we voted on it, it won, and then we got to work.
And we together as a class built each and every step.
We as a class then determined, okay,
who are the people that we are going to need to talk to in
order to ensure that we've, you know,
met every single part of the planning process.
We talked about how it aligned with some of the
sustainability goals that we were talking about,
which tied into everything we were doing for the entire
year.
It obviously aligned with a lot of the skills that we were
working on all year within that course.
And, you know,
and so students from the very beginning knew how they were
going to be assessed.
They knew that they cared about this project.
And then we together formulated each student's role.
And so each student had a role and a part of the project
that they were going to be responsible for completing.
And it was my job to then evaluate, you know,
individually if they, you know,
met or exceeded criteria individually as well.
And so this obviously gave students opportunity to meet
with administration.
Obviously,
I had to fill out some paperwork in order to secure our
track at the school,
but they really made sure that they had the right place
that they were going to fundraise for.
They made sure that they created t-shirts and that they
received donations for water and fruit.
They, you know,
worked with parents that were very passionate about mental
health within our community.
They had counselors from different organizations in the
community come and speak at the run.
They organized the marketing and the communication and
social media channels and all of those really amazing
things that you see in a professional run.
They did all of that together as a class.
And it's still today, as I'm speaking,
it gives me goosebumps.
Today,
it's still one of my most cherished memories from my time
in the classroom.
I still have students who come talk to me about it because
they, you know,
were then able to put that they organized this run on
college applications and they were able to speak to it,
you know, in college interviews.
We actually ended up doing it.
These students were freshmen and they actually ended up
doing it their sophomore year as well.
Obviously junior year gets a little crazy with a lot of
other, you know, competing priorities,
but it was really amazing to see that we raised almost
$10,000 for mental health resources within our community.
And I'm so, so proud of what those students accomplished.
So as you think about your assessments,
whether it's small scale, large scale,
really think about what are ways in which I can engage my
students in their communities, in their schools,
working with their peers, working with community members.
What are all the ways we can make that work together?
So I hope these tips help you think creatively as we
continue through this latter part of the year.