K. Janae's High Five - How do we know they got it?

You plan, plan, plan. You create this engaging lessons and design sweet supplemental materials and labs. You call guest speakers, show video clips, get your hands dirty. But how do you know they got it?! We assess. We write multiple choice questions and draft task sheets. We count participation points and mark-up public speaking manuscripts. 

I knocked out a High Five this week with Five Ways to Assess students. Five ways to ensure that they're getting it.

1. Check for Understanding

• Formative Assessment - let's hit the pause button here for a hot second and make sure everyone's on the same page. Because I am doing me student teaching at a school that is one-to-one I am interested in ways to check for understanding digitally. I love this infographic and its digital (and non-digital) formative assessment recommendations.

2. Student Portfolios

• In agriculture education, we have the privilege of teaching in uniquely designed classrooms. Someday's it is a room with four walls and desks, somedays its a chemistry lab, a greenhouse, a field, an agribusiness, a welding shop, you get the point. What about assessing students experiential learning through the format of student portfolios. Not only does this allow students to see how far they come in a marking period or semester, but also provides them with a compilation of projects to show their skills to a future employer. Application, application, application!

3. Peer-Assessment

• Let's create a classroom culture where our students feel comfortable giving and receiving constructive criticism from their peers. I want my classroom to be an environment of respect where my students constantly work to build each other up and make each other next time. I think peer-assessment can be more effective than shared rubrics. What if we used our strong students to help coach weaker students? 

4. Self-Assessment

• Reflection. Growth Mindset. How well did I do? What will make me better for next time? Who said the teacher was the only one who had to do the evaluating of students work? Self-assessment can be a powerful tool to give students ownership of their own progress. Here's some great questions to guide students to high levels of thinking in self-assessment and reflection.

5. Backwards Design. 

• In efforts to make assessments most meaningful and effective, it's important to include them in key parts of backwards design planning. This video talks about assessment done in ways to develop rigor in students, but makes a really awesome point about asking "how will I know?" So how will I know everything for my summative unit assessment? 

• Major Assessments > Intermediate Assessments or Check-Ins > Activities

Simply put, as educators let's ask ourselves, are our assessments authentic? Are the tests, projects and presentations really telling us if our students "got it"?

Simply put, I don't want to assess my students just to assess. I'm not about teaching to the test. I'm about teaching to create connections and dig deeper.

Here's a High Five from Me to You, K. Janae