Evaluating Learning

When I was in school I always thought that teaching techniques like using a rubric or citing information in a paper was brand new because I wasn't introduced to it until middle school or higher! So as the naive little girl I was I thought wow this teacher really knows what they're doing they came up with this thing called a rubric and it tells me exactly what I need to do to get an "A!" He should tell the other teachers about this! 

Even though I wasn't smart enough to know that my middle school teacher didn't come up with this I was smart enough to know that following a rubric was one of the best things I could do for my grade. Everything was laid out exactly how I should complete my project in order to achieve success. 

The resource I found in the ASCD was The Formative Assessment Action Plan: Practical Steps To More Successful Teaching And Learning. The description of this resources says that:

                "Students perform poorly on assessments primarily because they don't see the relevance of the content they are expected to master, they think they know the material but really don't, or teachers don't recognize that students aren't learning." 

The last part of that statement is pretty powerful! Teachers don't recognize that students aren't learning. Maybe I'm a little harsh, but, how does a teacher not realize their students aren't learning? Isn't that the purpose of formative assessment? 

The purpose of this resources is to ensure the following:

1. Ensure students understand the purpose of the assignment, task, or lesson, including how they will be assessed. 
2. Provide students with information about their successes and needs.
3. Capture the performance data that teachers need to guide student learning. 

Number 1 does a great job explaining the purpose of a rubric. To inform the student how they will be assessed. I think sometimes in education it's all about the element of surprise, for example teachers won't tell students what will be on a test so that they study everything, or they won't share the format of the test, and for what reason. So they stay up all night studying useless information, or so they worry their buts off to realize it's multiple choice. I think that as teachers we need to remember that education is about preparing our students for the real world. And the real world is about preparation and application. It's not a matter of regurgitating what they learned and forgetting it right after the "test." So we should prepare our students. Tell them what we expect and what grade they will receive for the level of effort their willing to put into their work. 

In all of the classes we have I try to draw parallels, because in some ways I feel like the pedagogy of teaching is very linear. And so in the Stoughton reading we learn that there are two main types of rubrics. There is task specific and generic. From there they are divided into analytic and holistic  And so to me the analytic rubric reminds me of a managerial lesson; assessing the students on their proficiency in the area. Holistic reminds me of a operational lesson; assessing the students on their ability to perform the task. We know that in a managerial lesson our goal is that the students would structure their thinking in the way of "solving a problem" per say  And so assessing their proficiency of a subject would be assessing their thoughts and knowledge of a subject. And operational lessons are assessing their ability to do something. So could they make a pen that allows the animals to be gathered and contained. Yes or no. Of course I could always be wrong in the way i'm thinking, I just wonder if for the different types of lessons we're teaching if we should be using a different type of assessment. 

I really like the idea of assessing students using a concept map. Like Warner says in the reading having students complete a lab only shows that they can follow directions it doesn't show that they know what's happening. A few weeks ago our reading reflection was to create a mind map for the principles of teaching. I found this exercise to be very helpful. We know that all learners are unique and learn in different ways. In creating a concept map the students are able to show the connections they make. It's more of a student centered approach. Like the problem solving approach, the teacher knows where he/she wants the class to go but allows the students to get there with little structure and direction. This seems like the same thing to me. With the different formats of concept maps we're able to offer that little bit of structure and direction but the student manages the learning. They complete the map and then we can look at it to see if their forming the right connections or if they need more clarity in a specific area. 

The first story in Chapter 14 is typical of the two types of people we hear about: Street smart, and book smart. I find that in high school the book smart people reign while in college sometimes it's the street smart. They already have the work ethic because they built it up in high school in order to do well. Struggling with a subject isn't a surprise to them they already know they will need to study more. Whereas the book smart individual has more of a fixed mindset in the manner that if they can't do well in a subject it's because they're not good at it.

As educators I think it's important that we don't promote the labels of street smart and book smart because the real question is "how are you smart?" Just as there are different learning styles there are different assessment styles. And we want our students to do well and succeed in order to do that we need to accommodate their need for a more unique assessment if that's whats necessary. In every unit we teach I think we should be striving to have 3-4 different forms of assessments so that our students don't fall under the mindset of "i'm not smart" but instead say "this is how i'm smart!"

I did follow the link in the Stoughton reading for a rubric generator and made this one. I think that's a great resource! I didn't realize they were so easily available!