Assessment FOR Learning - Practical ideas for more frequent assessment to enhance learning

[Scott Habeeb]

This post was originally posted on Assessment FOR Learning on October 30, 2009.

As a teacher, have you ever experienced anything similar to the following scenario:

You teach your course content over a period of time. The day before your big test you have a review activity of some sort. The review activity is a good one. It goes well, but during the activity you realize that your students don’t know the material all that well. Considering the number of days you spent covering it, you would have thought they would have known it better by now. The next day on the test the students end up doing fairly well – but probably not as well as they could have done.

If you have experienced a situation like this then you have experienced a situation in which AFL has been used but not to its fullest extent.

If kids did better on the test than they did the day before on the review, then they have obviously used the feedback from the review to guide their studying. That is AFL at work.

But what if the kids had come in on the review day already knowing the content as well as they did on the test day? If that had been the case, then the review day could have been an opportunity to go even further with the content, to master it even better, or to apply it in new ways. AFL strategies could have been used to make this happen.

AFL assessment strategies could be used along the way to help learning “sink in and stick.” I would encourage you to consider assessing more frequently so that students are more frequently engaged with the content and regularly (daily) analyzing their understanding. By the time the review comes along, they should already know what they know and know what they have yet to master. This would be the ideal learning situation.

Here are some strategies that IF USED FOR THIS PURPOSE could be helpful AFL practices:

1. A short daily quiz – The same quiz could even be given on multiple days. It doesn’t have to count much. It might not count at all. On a daily basis, though, the students have a chance to analyze what they know and what’s important. Students need to be informed that this is the purpose of the daily quiz or else they will just see it as another assignment.
2. Rubric for students to check – This idea will be described more elaborately in a future post. For now, what if students had a rubric of important information? Each day they could have time in class to rate how well they know the content. This would allow them to daily assess themselves and to daily review material.
3. Exit questions – Each day students could have a few questions to answer at the end of class. They could find the answers in their notes which would cause them to look back over what they had learned. Never end a class by simply ending notes. Always have students go back over what was covered and analyze how well they know the key points.
4. Do Now about the previous day – Students could start each day with a Do Now (Anticipatory Set) that requires them to look back at what they learned the day before.

None of these strategies are unique to AFL, and I doubt any of them sound all that revolutionary to a teacher with any experience. Remember – AFL isn’t about what strategies you use as much as HOW and WHY you use them. This is what causes a teaching strategy to become an AFL tool. You are assessing students frequently in a manner that allows the students to use the feedback to guide their learning. That’s AFL.

[Kyle c. fort]

its o.k. to asign some review work before the big test but not to much
becuase some kids thing it mite be to much and fight u on it . instead of trying to learn it
for the lazzy ones that thier own problim, the lazzy put more work in avoid the the study than doing it

[Scott Habeeb]

I would think that all 4 of those examples could work in the situation you describe. A Do Now question written on a chalkboard is just as effective as one shown over an LCD projector. You might try something like this for the rubric idea:

Have students take notes however they normally do. Have then keep a 2nd sheet of paper with them. At the end of the notes (or maybe even at several points during a lecture - and I'm assuming that with 47 students you are somewhat lecture driven) have the kids stop and fill in/create their own rubric. You would guide them on what categories would be on the rubric - main idea, key people, vocab, etc. They would have to look back over their notes to get the info to add. This rubric would grow during the course of a unit. At the end of each class period they could turn to a partner and quiz the partner based on what they have on their rubric. At the end of the unit, the rubric becomes the study guide.

[Steven John Parkes]

This sounds wonderful. Anyone have ideas on how to make this work with seven classes averaging 47 learners with no electronic equipment available. I would love to hear about it.