Co-Constructing Criteria with Students

An amazing group of teachers have been coming together monthly to explore classroom assessment. It has been great to be involved in the conversations as we collaborate and share ideas about how to use assessment to improve students' learning.

Last night, we discussed how to set and use criteria with students. Research strongly supports involving students in the assessment process. Setting criteria with students is a great way to begin involving students. When students understand what the learning target is, and they understand how to get there, learning improves. This holds most true for our learners who struggle (Davies, 2011).

In Making Classroom Assessment Work, Anne Davies shares her 4 step process for setting and using criteria with students. This is a process I have found particularly powerful in my own work, both in working with students, and when working with teachers in setting goals for improving student learning.

The process is:

1. Brainstorm 
2. Sort and categorize
3. Post a T-chart
4. Revise and refine

We made paper airplanes, and set criteria for assessing our work by using this process.

First we brainstormed a list, and then sorted and categorized. If we were working with students, some of the criteria on the list, particularly around "teamwork" would have to be further unpacked, as some of the language is vague.

You can see how we colour-coded the like-criteria into categories.

While participants went about using the criteria to build their planes, I went about transferring our criteria to a t-chart. As you can see, the criteria needed further discussion and refinement as we discovered that some criteria were either not applicable, difficult to measure, or incompatible with other criteria.

I love the iterative and reciprocal nature of this process as we work through it with students in the classroom. It is messy and takes dialogue, negotiation, and much consensus building. The fact that it is messy, to me, is the best reason to engage in the process. As a teacher, what better opportunity is there to model how we think about and work with multiple perspectives and sources of information?

What are your thoughts? What do you do to involve students in the assessment process? What do you want to try? Who do you have who can help you, that you can reflect on the process with?

Expecting the Most of our Learners

Last week I had the good fortune of traveling to Bench Elementary in Cowichan Bay with some of the staff from Mountain View Elementary here in Nanaimo. We were visiting with the intent of seeing the balanced literacy program that has been adopted school-wide based on the Daily 5 by Gail Boushey and Joan Mosher.

In all of the classrooms we visited, we were warmly welcomed, and the teachers and students were eager to have us see the work they were doing. I got the impression that this was a school where everyone was on-board with balanced literacy. There was a common language in and between all of the classrooms around expectations and the intended learning of the students. Underlying that was a strong sense of community and caring.

The grade 4/5 class that I visited was an exemplar for high expectations and differentiation. When we arrived, students were involved in a writing workshop. Kids were writing; conferencing with one another and with their teacher and the student teacher; taking part in self- and peer-assessment; reading model texts; and just generally engaged in thinking. There was noise, there was movement, there was talking, there were pages being crumpled up and tossed in the recycling, there was learning! The expectations on these kids were noticeably high from the moment we walked in the room, and every one of the students were deeply engaged in their work. While chatting with the classroom teacher I learned that there were a slew of learning needs, and that the expectations upon each student were adjusted accordingly, but there was a universal expectation that everyone be engaged, and everyone learn to the best of his or her ability. These expectations were evident in the students' written work, evident in the level of reflective language they possessed, and evident in their knowledge of why they were doing what they were doing--they clearly saw their work as being important.

I appreciate an environment where expectations are high, and where students are given the tools and support that they need to meet those expectations. I appreciate an environment where the core learning outcomes are clearly communicated and modeled so that students know what achievement looks like. And I especially appreciate an environment in which there is a strong sense of belonging, community, and mutual respect so that all students can feel safe and dignified about who they are an what they can achieve.