Engaged Student Assessments

This post is fifth of a series based on excepts from my book on Student-Engaged Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners by Laura Greenstein and Mary Ann Burke (2020). You can purchase the book from Roman and Littlefield for charts, examples, and worksheets on how to engage students to become owners of their learning successes.

What Do Engaged Students Look Like?

Teachers have observed that engaged learners:

• Find motivation and personal meaning in learning and assessing.
• Rely on verified practices and routines for practical and participatory assessment.
• Display indicators of engagement including interest, purpose, and resolve.

Engagement is at the heart of motivation. This applies to preschoolers playing tee ball as well as to adults in the workplace and teachers in the classroom. When 3^rd grader Torrance says he is not interested in playing ball but wants to ride a horse, his father says they can’t afford riding so he has to play ball. As a result, he’s disengaged and wanders around the outfield without purpose.

After reading about “boring” poets and traditional poetry forms in English class, Keenan hastily decides he loathes poetry, so he writes an original rap to describe DNA. When his teacher returns his “poem,” the note says that it doesn’t align with the school’s writing standards for supporting claims with evidence. Here’s a small segment of Keenan’s poem in which he explains deoxyribonucleic acid, it’s structure, and purpose.

Listen to a story that I’m going to tell.

How DNA is found inside all your cells.

In your hair, blood, skin, and lungs as well;

Even got some DNA to help me smell.

My DNA is not for your replication.

Use your own nucleic a’ for your mutation.

 Keenan’s wants no part of your creation.

I need my DNA for life’s duration.

Fortunately for Keenan, his uncle is a teacher and explains there are two writing standards that are part of supporting claims with evidence. These include “developing the topic with relevant facts” and “providing a concluding statement that follows the argument.” He also clarifies that poetry can take make forms.

While the standards don’t specifically mention poetry, his teacher is willing to listen as he reasons that writing is about communicating; and his rap clearly communicates some principles of DNA. As a result of his teacher’s aha moment, there are two positive outcomes: higher engagement for Keenan and a deeper understanding of diverse perspectives on writing by the teacher. Additionally, Keenan uses the assignment to learn about how DNA is collected and whether organ transplants can change a person’s DNA.

Another Example of an Engaged Student

Kennan’s third-grade sister, Keanna, gets so excited about his rap, that she asks her teacher if she can write one. The goal and intention is to prepare a summary of their unit on animal adaptations. In it, she is expected to explain the key ideas with evidence. With her brother’s help she writes:

They say penguins and gulls are alike because

Both have feathers and bones from past history.

(The teacher suggests antiquity, so she looks it up and changes her rap.)

Yet, one soars through air, the other through water.

Adaptation means adjusting to some type of change.

Maybe I’ll grow feathers when the climate’s rearranged.

Both of their teachers develop scoring rubrics based on the district’s criteria: clarity of information, organization, use of evidence, focus on topic, and accuracy. They decide to add their own indicators for reflection and creativity. At the dinner table, both students are enthusiastic about this personalization of learning and talk about rewriting their work in response to the feedback they received.

 What Does an Engaged School Look Like?

When students aren’t performing up to expectations, it is typical to start by assessing their academic skills. When the causes aren’t academic, then inattention, mental health, or problems at home are explored. Sometimes, it’s just plain boredom with the repetitiveness or irrelevance of the classroom that leads to a student’s lack of interest and disengagement. However, there are numerous substantiated reasons to make student engagement a priority. An essential component of engagement is that it changes a school and classroom culture of testing and assessing learners to one that is a culture of involvement in learning and improvement in outcomes that include:

Personalizing Learning Is Motivational

• Learning is personalized: There are multiple pathways for achieving goals. Students may decide to display their achievement of the learning criteria in an infographic, model, video, or medium of interest to them.
• Builds trust: Social and emotional skills are the mainstay of learning. Relationships and mutual respect are developed when a child feels their ideas are valued.
• Compels various types of learning opportunities: In an engaged classroom, options for learning are essential. For students who may not have the highest writing scores, relying on images or recordings to show their learning can be just as effective as writing them.
• Recognizes the explicit learning expectations: Students feel more confident when they understand how much and how deeply they are expected to master the learning standards and can see their relevance before starting their learning journey.

Involvement in Learning Is Motivational

• Encourages effort: When a child feels that their classroom is a safe place to express their ideas, they are more willing to reach towards higher levels of learning. They know that mistakes are part of learning.
• Supports intrinsic motivation: A desire to learn is essential. When students are comfortable and interested, they are more apt to take ownership, set goals, and determine a course of action.
• Boosts metacognition: The use of prompts and questions such as “What would you do, and why?” or “What evidence do you have of progress?” helps students dig more deeply into their thinking.
• Leads to ownership of learning: Ultimately students become the owners and proprietors of assessment who take responsibility for their own learning outcomes.

Our December 7th post will explain how students assess their learning outcomes. For more charts, examples, and worksheets on how to engage students to own their learning, you can purchase Student-Engaged Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners by Laura Greenstein and Mary Ann Burke (2020) from Roman and Littlefield.

How Students Assess Their Learning Outcomes

This post is fourth of a series based on excepts from my book on Student-Engaged Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners by Laura Greenstein and Mary Ann Burke (2020). You can purchase the book from Roman and Littlefield for charts, examples, and worksheets on how to engage students to become owners of their learning successes.

Student Created Success Criteria

Students can vary in how they write their success criteria. At one end of the quality spectrum is the student who says, “I will write a mystery story. I will use adjectives to make it spooky.” Stretching beyond these foundations, another student may write, “I will write and edit a well-sequenced story that includes a coherent beginning, middle, and conclusion, utilize proper English conventions, and incorporate evidence of achieving the learning intention.”

Example of a Student Designed Self-Assessment Rubric

In science, a student-designed science experiment includes a definition of the problem, asks purposeful questions, clearly describes the process, reviewed current state of knowledge, their hypotheses, procedures, and results. The scoring rubric includes criteria for evaluating the statement of the problem, procedures followed, and the accuracy of interpretation of data. The table below shows an example of a student’s self-assessment rubric for evaluating readiness skills and alignment with the learning intention.

How Students Become Reflective Assessors

Assessment readiness requires more than academic qualities. Teachers must also consider students’ readiness that are relative to their academic foundations and motivations to learn. Teachers and their students can also reflect on their physical readiness, self-awareness, learning routines, preferences, and practices that support assessment readiness. Readiness can also be adaptable for individual school communities and schools as some settings rely on pertinent social skills and others focus more self-awareness and metacognitive skills.

As students mature, they develop clearer ideas about who they are and how they think. They also begin to identify their strengths and recognize personal struggles. This development of self-awareness and self-esteem can be fostered by assessments that encourage and guide students in monitoring their own learning.  As students become reflective and flexible assessors, they can begin to personalize learning outcomes. For example, when given a choice to document their learning, Wei decides to make an instructive video, while Fiona illustrates a user’s guide to learning.

When Students Define Their Self-Assessment Tools

One day, Max said to his teacher, “I want to try something new for my project, but don’t want to be penalized for creativity since it’s the first time I’m using Piktochart, an infographic maker.” After a brief conversation, Max and his teacher mutually agreed to count the content ratings of the rubric at 90% and the design ratings at 10%. With the pressure off, Max is inspired to try something new.

In the classroom, numerous elements of assessment have been shown to increase student success. These include:

• Clarity of purpose
• Relevance to the learner
• Engagement
• Authentic experiences
• Personal reflection
• Informative feedback
• Reliance on consistent assessment

Teachers’ Observations of Student Self-Assessor Readiness

Teachers must rely on observing the outcomes (cognitive and emotional) of students’ learning. Students’ internal voices such as “I don’t care” or “I’ll try harder” are made visible through behaviors and products of learning. Sometimes, “Give it some more effort” or “I know you can do better” is often the default response. To boost success, it is more informative for teachers to ask “What do you want to learn about this topic?” or “What support and resources do you most need?” Teachers can clarify a student’s need for guidance by asking, “What is frustrating you right now?” or “How can I help you with your next step?” Developing a constructive outlook is the first step in helping students assess their own learning. Teachers must also consider their students’ assessment readiness through their comments, mindsets, and actions. Self-reflective questions may include:

• What does the pre-assessment data tell the teacher about the students’ knowledge, skills, interests, and readiness to move to the next lesson?
• How does this assessment data align to district mandated teaching standards and content?
• What are various options that students can use to demonstrate their learning outcomes?

Our November 23rd post will explain how students assess their learning outcomes. For more charts, examples, and worksheets on how to engage students to own their learning, you can purchase Student-Engaged Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners by Laura Greenstein and Mary Ann Burke (2020) from Roman and Littlefield.

What Teachers Can Do To Increase Student Learning

This post is second of a series based on excepts from my book on Student-Engaged Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners by Laura Greenstein and Mary Ann Burke (2020). You can purchase the book from Roman and Littlefield for charts, examples, and worksheets on how to engage students to become owners of their learning successes.

Student Ownership of Their Learning

Student ownership of their learning abilities encourages deeper learning. This means exploring learning through multiple lenses to uncover the complex intricacies of learning. For younger children, it is not attending a field trip to a bee farm, but thinking about what would happen if there were no longer bees in the world. Or perhaps, learning about dinosaurs and then creating a dinosaur that could live in today’s environment. Deeper learning helps students recognize that straightforward information often has weightier and broader meanings: And that it can be fun and creative to delve into these ideas.

When students in Ms. Ems’ fifth-grade class were asked to think about a world with no bees, Aman said, “That would be great, because my sister is allergic.” Amira added, “But, I would really miss honey on my peanut butter sandwich.” Ms. Ems explained the importance of bees in pollination and then asked students to imagine a world without whales, or hate, or even teachers.

Student Development of Individualized Learning Intentions

As students become owners of their learning, they begin by identifying the central ideas of a topic, pair these with big-picture standards, develop local learning intentions, and then plan and personalize those aims and goals. In the past, all the students would have watched a video, gone on a field trip, or invited an expert, such as a beekeeper to visit the class to talk about pollination and the production of honey.

Student-Engaged Classrooms

In a student-engaged classroom, students demonstrate their understanding of the broad learning intentions. For example, students can explain the life stages of the honey bee, the construction of their hives, how bees communicate, their role in pollination, and the production and uses of honey. They can then choose a path and strategy for further learning.

Marcella prefers to work solo and wants to create a precise diagram of the inside of a hive. Chester and Deshi want to work together to present the stages of a honey bee’s life. Chara wants to do “something” with honey but isn’t sure yet. She begins by exploring the source, types, nutrients, and uses of honey.

Each student or group then develops and describes their purposes and strategies for learning. They also consider how they can show what they learned and have it assessed in relation to their learning purposes. Each step in the learning process includes specific and intentional learning actions and also how each action and outcome will be assessed. This doesn’t mean there is a quiz after each step. Students monitor progress, adjust their progress, and display evidence with narratives and reflections.

Applying Standards to Student-Owned Learning Intentions

Today’s classrooms are standards-based places. Learning begins with large-scale standards (i.e. reading for information, solving real-world mathematical problems, planning and constructing explanations, and developing solutions). In relation to the honey bee project, those types of large-scale standards are too broad. They need to be customized so that students can understand the purpose and fine-tune their own learning intentions. Here are some examples:

• Reading for information is the foundation for identifying parts of a honeybee or illustrating their life cycle.
• Solving real-world problems can mean planning design specifications for a beehive or a garden that supports pollinators.
• In science, constructing explanations and designing solutions for vanishing bee populations leads to predicting a world without bees and proposing ways to prevent that from happening.
• Social studies standards can be used to explain how a hive is a culture and each type of bee has a specific role.
• Mapping the places in the world where bees are increasing and decreasing can lead to problem-solving.
• Reading materials can be as diverse as the straightforward “Flight of the Honey Bee” by Raymond Huber, “The Case of the Vanishing Bees” by Sandra Markle or for older students, the multilayered “The History of Bees” by Maja Lunde.

Aligning Learning Intentions to Student-Engaged Assessments

From these examples, you can see how student-engaged assessment can be specific to learning intentions and success criteria while being customizable and flexible. It’s not difficult to stretch beyond traditional standards and assessment methods such as quizzes that ask students to define vocabulary or to sequence the life cycle of bees. Higher level thinking such as critical thinking can be self-assessed using a rubric. Self-reflection of problem-solving skills can rely on an annotated checklist of the steps. Alternatively, students can design and create products such as an “Illustrated Guide to Honeybees” that aligns with the content standards and student learning intentions and also includes an assessment for the audience to complete.

Our November 9^th post will focus on how teachers can use students to assess learning in the classroom. For more charts, examples, and worksheets on how to engage students to own their learning, you can purchase Student-Engaged Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners by Laura Greenstein and Mary Ann Burke (2020) from Roman and Littlefield.

How Parents Can Support Student Success

This post is a parallel commentary from the parent perspective on Mary Ann Burke’s October 19, 2021 post “How You Can Support Student Success” from her series Student Engagement Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners.

Students Must Feel Safe and Secure

One of the basic foundational steps parents could take to foster success is to make sure your child has a designated spot for their studies. When children return home from school, this specific spot signifies a consistent, regular rhythm in their school day. They know that their learning and studies continue in this spot because it is reserved especially for them. When all their learning supplies are in one, accessible location, this spot becomes a reliable source for students to meet the challenge of learning something new, applying knowledge, and accomplishing their dreams. Students feel safe knowing that they can complete assignments and projects in this one spot.

Likewise, students feel secure knowing that a trusted adult has made their education and learning a priority. This adult role-model could show interest in assignments and projects, attend school events with the child, or ask the student if they need help on school studies. In addition to all things related to learning, students also need reassurance that a grown-up has invested time and energy to advocate for their mental health and well-being. A parent or trusted adult could also ask the student about social activities at school, friends they hang around, or for older children, how they feel about external influences like the news, social media, or politics. Asking for a young person’s opinion and respecting their viewpoints is a sure way to help students feel safe and secure.

Students Must Learn How to Ask Teachers to Clarify Learning Intentions

Communication in a classroom must be a two-way street. In order for students to have ownership of their learning, they must also learn how to ask for clarification from the teacher. In moments of frustration, it is easy for students to throw up their hands and say, “I don’t get it!” Parents can be instrumental in guiding students towards articulating and communicating what their learning needs might be from the teacher.

The first step you can take is to ask your child for the learning context. Ask your child “Can you explain what you are learning?” If your child is able to give you general background information about the class content, this is a good start!

Next, ask your child if they understand the learning task. It might sound something like “Do you know what the instructions are asking you to do?” or “What do you think you are supposed to do with the information the teacher gave you?” If your child is able to rephrase the learning task in their own words, they have a good idea what they are supposed to do. If they have difficulty understanding the directions, or they don’t understand what the outcome of the project is supposed to look like, help your child to articulate their question to ask the teacher. If your child is in one of the primary elementary grade levels, you may need to help compose an email to the teacher. As much as it is possible, encourage your child to ask the teacher directly for clarification, whether in class the next day, or by sending an email. This will inform the teacher whether or not they have made their learning intentions clear. With parent or adult support, this is a very valuable lesson for your child to take ownership of their learning!

Learning Assessments Must Inform and Guide Students

Within the range of classroom learning and performance assessments, teachers may give authentic assessments like projects or portfolios for students to demonstrate their learning. Inasmuch as these give students to flexibility to design how they will be assessed, parents must also frame the “traditional” pen and paper test as an informative assessment.

All too often, students receive a chapter review guide, take the chapter test, receive the score, and then quickly file away the test and disregard any learning opportunities from taking the test. Recently, my seventh-grade daughter took a math unit test. They did a lot to practice at home and review in class. Alas, she did not do well on the test! The teacher took the opportunity to use the assessment to inform and guide students to extend learning. He took the time to review the test in class and then gave a couple of options for students who wanted to learn from the assessment; they could either submit a “redo” of the missed test questions or retake the entire test. Either of these options would give them a chance to improve their grade. Additionally, the teacher also offered office hours during lunch and after school. As a parent, encourage your child to learn from their mistakes and take advantage of every opportunity to improve.

Ask the teacher what their policy is about using assessments to inform and guide students. Whether it be authentic assessments or the traditional test, communicate with the teacher that your ultimate goal for your child is that they be able to learn and improve with each learning opportunity.

Students Can Define How They Learn Best

Even as teachers are designing a variety of learning activities and assessments for students, parents can also encourage their children to take initiative to discover a wide spectrum of topics as they desire on the home front. Children may be interested in learning hands-on, kinesthetic activities like automotive mechanics, learning and applying a physical technique or skill in sports, or maybe even playing a musical instrument. Still yet, other children love challenging themselves to conquer math and engineering tasks, tackle outdoor survival skills, or immerse themselves into film production and editing. The possibilities are endless. As we nurture our children’s passions and infuse that with the foundations of learning at school, we support student success!

How You Can Support Student Success

This post is first of a series based on excepts from my book on Student-Engaged Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners by Laura Greenstein and Mary Ann Burke (2020). You can purchase the book from Roman and Littlefield for charts, examples, and worksheets on how to engage students to become owners of their learning successes.

Students Must Feel Safe and Secure

If children are to be successful, they must first feel safe and supported. Maslow taught us this in 1943 through his hierarchy of needs. Yet, for some learners, life is not safe. They may live in crime-ridden neighborhoods where it’s not safe to walk home from school. Others are chronically hungry. A student named Jake qualified for free/reduced lunches, but his mother was too proud to accept help. Jake would routinely show up at the learning lab, hoping there were some leftovers from the day’s snack. The teacher always put a little aside for him, and he was always appreciative in his own shy way.

By his junior year, he had taken and did well on ASVAB (the military aptitude test) and enrolled in the Delayed Entry Program. Two years after his high school graduation, he returned to his school to tell his story and thank his teachers, counselors, and especially the principal who mentored him through the process. He was proud of his promotion to Specialist and had already earned a service ribbon. Privately, he told me that he was glad to finally be able to pay his mother back for all the sacrifices she made for him. For Jake, building foundations of food, medical care, and stability in his life were essential foundations for success.

Teachers Must Clarify Learning Intentions

Well-being in assessment comes when students have a clear understanding of the learning intentions and also have opportunities to personalize and adjust them in ways that make sense to them and support their success. This may mean deconstructing large-scale standards into actionable and measurable interim steps. For example, “Compare two decimals by reasoning about their size” (CCSS Math 4.NF.C.7) becomes “I can read and understand decimals and put them in order.” When Carlita is asked on a test which answer is true (A) 0.7 > 0.4 or (B) 0.4 > 0.7, she becomes apprehensive when she can’t remember what that the “<” and “>” symbols mean. Fortunately, when her teacher posts that “>” means “is greater than,” she has an aha moment and completes the task accurately.

Once learners’ needs for safety and well-being are met and they feel academically and emotionally secure in their classroom, inclusion and belonging is another step towards personal achievement. Standardized tests are mandatory, but may not sustain these basic needs for struggling learners. Our series of blogs will preview classroom techniques and assessments that are inclusive of all learners, relevant to the student, and aligned with learning.

Learning Assessments Must Inform and Guide Students

Informative assessment is essential for all students, especially those who may feel disenfranchised or have experienced failure. Instructionally supportive assessment relies on frequent check-ins for understanding as well as feedback that provides clarification on misunderstandings and guidance on next steps. These assessments give learners voice, such as adding annotations to their responses or asking lingering questions within the assessment. Feedback can come from teachers as well as peers with these prompts: “What you said about ___ is very clear, but I’m still confused on___” or “I see you included ___ but have you also thought about ___?”

As students mature, they develop clearer ideas about who they are and how they think. They begin to recognize their strengths as well as struggles. This development of self-awareness and self-esteem can be fostered by assessments that encourage and guide students in monitoring their learning.  When students become reflective and flexible assessors, they can also personalize learning intentions. For example, when given a choice in showing understanding of event sequences, Wei decides to make an instructive video on writing a graphic novel, while Fiona wants to illustrate a user’s guide to sustainable gardens.

Students Can Define How They Learn Best

One day, Max said to his teacher, “I want to try something new for my project, but don’t want to be penalized for lack of creativity since it’s the first time I’m using Piktochart, an infographic maker.” After a brief conversation, they mutually agreed to count the content ratings of the rubric at 80% and the design ratings at 20%. With the pressure off, Max was inspired to try a new way to show his learning. In all these examples, consistency and clarity of learning objectives are central to success.

Our November 2^nd post will discuss what teachers can do to increase students’ learning successes. For more charts, examples, and worksheets on how to engage students to own their learning, you can purchase Student-Engaged Assessment: Strategies to Empower All Learners by Laura Greenstein and Mary Ann Burke (2020) from Roman and Littlefield.