Let Them Grow: Student Self-Assessment

In the previous two posts, I’ve shared ideas for helping teachers lighten their load by getting rid of worksheets that are ineffective and time-consuming to grade and by having students instead collaborate, read, and write. I talked about the power of conferring about students’ reading and writing, and about how providing fewer comments and more celebrations can increase the impact of feedback while reducing teachers’ workload. I mentioned student self-assessment as another way to lighten the load. This week, I want to dig a little deeper into this, exploring ideas for self-assessment.

Learning actually increases when teachers assess less and students assess more.  Self-assessment contributes to the learning process and helps learners direct their energy toward areas for improvement.  Self-assessment is like being your own editor, developing an eye for improving your own work. It helps students understand the criteria for success and gives them responsibility for their own learning.

With these powerful benefits, it makes sense to share student self-assessment strategies when you coach teachers who aren’t using these practices.  I like to offer a few as options, giving the teacher agency in selecting what will work best for her and for her students.  Here are a few favorite self-assessment strategies:

Leveled Turn-It-In Baskets: Instead of one basket for completed student work, have three: an “I still need more practice” basket, an “I’ve got this” basket, and a “Give me a challenge” basket.  When students sort their own work, they are agentive about next steps – ready to revisit a confusing concept or rise to a more demanding application.

The Thumb: Every student has a built-in indicator for understanding – their thumb. At times in the lesson when teachers want to see how well students are grasping a concept, they can ask, and students can give a thumbs up, sideways, or down to rate their grasp of the content or skill. No papers to copy, distribute, gather, or grade. Just look at thumbs.

An alternate version of the thumb is the finger. One finger for “I still need more practice,” etc. (as described in the basket example, above).  This self-assessment can be privately held close to the chest for students who may be uncomfortable showing that they don’t understand.

Exit Slip: A ticket out the door is a quick way to have students say a little something about their learning that day. It ensures reflection, which is a great way to boost retention. Although I often use exit slips for formative assessments that I will evaluate, the exit-slip-as-self-assessment has a different purpose: It asks students to evaluate their own learning. The prompt can vary. Here are a few examples:

·         Was today’s activity helpful? Why or Why not?

·         Did you ask for help when you needed it?

·         What do you need more practice with?

·         Did you try your best?

·         Was this activity easy, a bit challenging, or very difficult? Why?

·         What resources helped you learn today?

And here’s a link to an exit ticket in Word that you can share and teachers can personalize.

Partner Talk

Students can ask their thinking partner to self-evaluate. Create a self-assessment anchor chart with students; it may have prompts similar to those listed above (for exit slips). With this anchor chart handy, students can ask peers to reflect aloud about their own learning.

The Importance of Clear Criteria

Before teachers jump in and try any of the above, they’ll need clear success criteria for each learning activity, and they’ll need to clearly communicate these criteria to their students. Having clear success criteria helps kids be more accurate in their self-assessments. Clear criteria mean students are more likely to give a thumbs down when there are skills they are stuck on. And there will be more cause for celebration when the papers in the “Give me a challenge” basket truly demonstrate understanding.

Self-assessment is a way to take the evaluation load off of the teacher.  And, importantly, it makes instruction more impactful and helps students grow.

This week, you might want to take a look at:

The traffic light system for self-assessment:

https://www.teachingchannel.org/video/peer-teaching--2

A podcast on improving student feedback:

http://www.spencerauthor.com/student-feedback/

Tips for asking better coaching questions after observations:

https://blog.teachboost.com/5-tips-for-asking-better-questions-after-teacher-observations

Be still and learn what teachers need:

https://ccira.blog/2019/02/19/teacher-coach-and-everything-in-between/

How to respond when students claim, “I don’t read!”:

https://pernillesripp.com/2018/09/22/i-dont-read/

That’s it for this week.  Happy Coaching!

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Let It Go: Let Them Write!

In last week’s post, I addressed the need for teacher self-care and how coaches can support it while improving instruction.  I suggested that you encourage teachers to lighten their load by letting go of the hours they spend grading worksheets and I suggested some alternative to that practice. Part of that advice was to have students do more writing.  Writing is an effective way for learners to show what they know. An open-ended response allows students with differing knowledge and ability to tackle the task and demonstrate what they are learning. Through writing, they can show their understanding of concepts and their increasing skills.

Suggesting more writing may seem antithetical to the idea of lightening a teacher’s load. What could be more time-consuming that grading students’ written work?  While it’s true that providing extensive feedback on written work can be time-consuming, let’s support teachers in letting go of less-productive means of providing feedback and instead remind them of ways that are both efficient and effective.

Fewer Comments

To start with, let’s remind teachers that extensive written comments on finished products are not productive.  A final draft isn’t a prime teaching opportunity. Students are done with that piece and likely to learn little from exhaustive comments that may be written there, especially when these comments point out something that should have been done differently.

Instead, find one or two things to celebrate.  Look for something that represents recent growth for the student. Do they show they are just beginning to grasp a new concept? Celebrate it!  Did they use a more advanced writing skill once in the paper? Point it out and praise it!  When we draw attention to those burgeoning abilities, they are more likely to be expanded and repeated.

We can also narrow the need for comments on final drafts by responding earlier in the process. Encourage teachers to collect a draft of the paper.  But instead of littering the draft with reactions, teachers can lighten their load and make their feedback more meaningful by asking what the students want support with. Before turning the paper in, students could highlight a section they want the teacher’s help with. On a tiny strip of paper stapled to the top, the student can write a question or express a concern or confusion. After a quick look over the entire paper, the teacher focuses his attention on what the student wants help with. One or two comments give the student something to work with. More than that overwhelms.

Student Self-Help

Some zealous teachers end up doing the work for students when they give feedback on written work. One teacher I know spends hours giving feedback on student papers.  She catches every punctuation error and carefully inserts the correction. She rewords awkward sentences, writing her edited version between the double-spaced lines. Her students have a love-hate relationship with this response. They’re glad they can meet this teacher’s expectations by inserting her recommendations, but they hate opening their papers and seeing all the red. They also hate losing ownership for their work. It sucks the joy out.

Encourage teachers to resist the urge to do the work for students. Instead, teachers can help students help themselves through mini-lessons on points of confusion, rubrics that share clear expectations, anchor charts that can be referenced during the work, and conferring while students work.  Also encourage peer feedback and student self-assessment. Tools like rubrics and anchor charts make this work more effective, too.

Don’t Grade Everything

Teachers may feel obligated to review everything their students write.  I think this comes from a mistaken view of the purpose of writing. When we view writing as simply an opportunity for students to show the teacher what they know, then it does seem obligatory for the teacher to respond. However, if writing is viewed as an opportunity for the student to explore his own thinking, to learn and to grow, then the process of writing itself has served the purpose. This purpose should be explicitly shared with students.

Some pieces of writing should receive teachers’ attention. Targeted feedback corrects misconceptions and supports growth. Additionally, some writing deserves an audience. Teachers can lighten their load and enrich the experience when an external, broader audience engages with students’ work. This makes writing more purposeful, authentic, and motivating.  And when students know their work is going public, they take more care.

Jeff Wilhelm said, “If you’re reading all of your students’ writing, they’re not writing enough.” Giving students many opportunities to write doesn’t mean teachers should be weighed down with volumes of papers to review.  Less is more.  Giving fewer comments, letting some work go unreviewed, and giving students tools for helping themselves can make teachers’ workload more manageable and increases students’ learning.

This week, you might want to take a look at:

Top 10 tips for conferring:

https://www.choiceliteracy.com/articles-detail-view.php?id=2528

Why every teacher deserves a coach:

http://www.teachhub.com/professional-development-every-teacher-needs-coach

Why and how for shared reading:

https://ccira.blog/2018/09/25/read-it-again-the-joy-of-shared-reading/

Tools for changing the grading conversation:

https://pernillesripp.com/2017/06/23/tools-for-changing-the-grading-conversation/

Lessons from learning to read Hebrew about beginning reading instruction:

https://choiceliteracy.com/article/confessions-of-a-struggling-beginning-reader/

That’s all for this week.  Happy Coaching!

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Helping Teachers Lighten Their Load

Teacher self-care is a hot topic for good reason. Teachers face pressures from accountability measures that focus on testing and evaluation. Increasing diversity requires thoughtful teachers to differentiate – a time-consuming process.  Public education takes regular blows in the media, but teachers’ heroic efforts to reach each child each day are seldom heralded. All this for significantly less pay than those with similar education and experience.  As teachers and coaches of teachers, it’s important to prioritize self-care outside of the classroom.  But there are also changes teachers can make in their classrooms that will lighten their load.

Giving Worksheets the Old Heave-Ho!

Let’s start with worksheets. If you could help teachers change only one thing about their practice that would lighten their load and increase student learning, this could be the thing!  Although worksheets make for easier classroom management while students sit independently filling in the blanks, teachers spend time copying and collating, and then lots of time grading, all for little impact.  Worksheets are those tasks that require students to copy, regurgitate, fill in the blank, or supply a single, very short answer. They are closed tasks that give students no choice in how they will learn.  Worksheets waste valuable class time and usually focus on rote skills.*

When my daughter was a stressed first-year teacher, I travelled to her state for a visit to see how I could help.  One of the first things I noticed when I walked into her classroom was a stack of papers on the corner of her desk. A high stack.  A very high stack.  While she busied herself tidying the room at the end of the day, I took a peek at the dates on papers in that stack.  The ones at the bottom of the stack had been done over two weeks ago. I set the top few inches of the stack aside and asked my daughter, “What would happen if I pushed this stack into the trash?” 

“You can’t do that. I have to grade them!” my conscientious daughter exclaimed, hurrying protectively toward the stack.

“Why?” I asked.  “Will your students notice if they don’t get these back?  Will their parents?”

“I guess not,” she said.  “They’ve probably forgotten about them.”

So, I gave that stack a big push, and they landed in the trash can conveniently located next to her desk.  No one – students, parents, or administrators – ever said a word about that stack of papers.  They never noticed.  That would certainly not have been the case if that stack had included students’ own preciously-crafted words or carefully thought out ideas.  But for a stack of repetitive practice work, the trash can was a worthy home.

Rather than taking stacks of worksheets home to be graded, teachers can instead do more of the things that do make a difference – and, thankfully, these practices also reduce teachers’ grading time.  Here are some things teachers can do instead:

Reading, Writing, and Conferring

Give students time to read.  While they read, students learn content and improve skills.  Through reading, students can learn about a topic from a variety of viewpoints.  And giving students time to read helps them improve this important skill. The best way for students to get better at reading is by reading! 

Reading time provides the perfect opportunity for teachers to confer with students about their understanding. Whether it’s a social studies text or a novel, as the teacher checks in one by one with students, understanding increases.

Conferring is also a research-based practice for improving writing instruction. Writing can be an open-ended opportunity for students to build understanding. Then, while students write, teachers confer, talking first about content and then about craft.

Conferences provide opportunities for teachers to seize a teachable moment and provide focused, individualized instruction.  Following a student’s lead, the teacher moves the student forward by providing a just-right nudge aimed at a student’s developing insights or abilities.  Individual student conferences are short and powerful, happening one-by-one as the teacher moves around the room while students work. During conferences, teachers teach. Both the student and the teacher jot down a note or two as a result of the conference, but there’s nothing to take home and grade!

Collaboration

Learning increases when knowledge is socially constructed.  Teachers who build time into the day for students to talk, think, and work together build students’ collaboration and social skills while targeting academic content.

When Lisa decided not to include a worksheet during her math lesson, she looked for a different way to build in lots of practice, because she knew repetition was needed to build students’ mental math skills.  So she took what would have been a worksheet and chopped it into separate problems. Then she gave each student a problem, set the timer for 5 minutes, and told students to meet with as many partners as possible during that time frame, each time reciting the problem and solution, listening to their partner do the same, switching problems with their partner, and going to find a new friend.  The lesson was a face-paced flurry of problem-solving!

Collaboration takes many forms: turn-and-talk, STEM challenges, peer feedback, case studies, jigsaw reading, fishbowl debates, and more.  What these activities have in common is that they put the work in the hands and minds of the learners. 

Lighten the Load

Reading, writing, conferring, and collaborating lighten teachers’ loads while engaging students in meaningful learning experiences.  Are you working with a teacher who is disappearing behind stacks of ungraded papers?  Consider how your coaching can encourage them to take care of themselves in ways that also enhance student learning.

This week, you might want to take a look at:

5 ways to encourage student collaboration:

https://www.teachingchannel.org/video/encourage-student-collaboration

New narrative non-fiction:

https://wehavekids.com/education/Best-Narrative-Nonfiction-Books-for-Kids

The relationship side of coaching:

http://blog.teachboost.com/managing-relationships-the-power-of-follow-up

Anchor charts for text evidence:

https://www.pinterest.com/kgflowers1/anchor-charts-text-evidence/

Effective use of questions as a teaching tool:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3776909/

That’s it for this week.  Happy Coaching!

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Mining for Student Experiences

All students have life experiences that can be connected to school learning. Unfortunately, sometimes teachers view families with limited economic resources as also being poor in terms of the quality of experiences they provide for their child. That is only true if we are blind to the connections between the curriculum and students’ personal experiences.

In the lounge and the PLC room, poverty surfaces as an explanation for low student achievement.  Deficit views of children creep in. Students’ out-of-school experiences sometimes become excuses for underachievement rather than resources for learning.  When I hear this kind of language creep in, I squirm and wonder when to say something and what to say.  We don’t want this kind of talk to continue. It erodes teachers’ efficacy and trickles down to students.  

I’ve decided that this kind of talking and thinking can’t go unaddressed. Teachers have to be able to recognize and face their own paradigms before they can change them.  When I face this issue head on, I often start with a read aloud (yes, teachers like read-alouds, too!) of a book like Fly Away Home, by Eve Bunting or Those Shoes, by Maribeth Boelts. Then we make lists of the knowledge that the main characters in these books possess.  From there, it’s easy to talk about the funds of knowledge our own students bring to school.

Children learn collaboration through working and playing together. They learn creativity by finding a new use for old objects. They learn the value of things by working or waiting for them. Maybe knowing how to read the bus schedule will help them with those elapsed time problems in math class.  Maybe their experiences at the laundromat taught them how many quarters make $2.00. We don’t wish poverty on anyone, but we can see all students’ experiences as additive, not subtractive. We can help teachers build on the experiences that students bring to classrooms, seeing the interconnectedness of the multiple sites of learning that children navigate. Compassion shouldn’t become pious pity that minimizes what children have to offer.

What gems from students’ background knowledge can you connect to the curriculum?  Students will see the richness of their own experiences as teachers draw upon them as classroom resources. Helping teachers mine these resources supports instruction that is rich and meaningful.

This week, you might want to take a look at:

Here are links for Fly Away Home and Those Shoes, mentioned above.

Personal storytelling to launch a narrative unit:

http://www.teachersforteachers.net/?p=5059

Coaching outstanding teachers:

http://barkleypd.com/blog/coaching-outstanding-teachers/

How to coach a cranky teacher:

https://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/coaching_teachers/2019/01/how_to_coach_a_cranky_teacher.html

Six strategies for teaching math throughout the day in early-childhood classrooms:

https://www.teachingchannel.org/blog/2018/02/23/6-strategies-for-teaching-math/

That’s it for this week.  Happy Coaching!

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