I was in a Twitter chat last night (#COLchat) with some great educators discussing grades, grading practices, reporting, etc. and guess what topic came up. You guessed it, reassessment. When I hinted at the process I use with my high school mathematics students, I was asked if I would write a blog post about my process to share with other educators. It is not that my process is special or secret or even a process that I thought of completely on my own. My process is something that I have adapted from things I have heard at conferences, from my colleagues, and from my personal experiences. Exactly what all educators do every day. A few years ago, while attending the Pearson Summer Assessment Training Institute I attended a session by Myron Dueck discussing his new book Grading Smarter Not Harder. In his session, Myron talked about many things that resonated with me and one of them was an assessment tracking sheet for students to track their progress throughout the year on assessments. I began thinking about this and wondering how I could make that work in my classroom. Challenge accepted!
Step #1 - Set up your assessment
I had already been writing my Learning Targets that I was assessing on the cover sheet of my assessment as well as identifying which LT each problem was assessing throughout my assessment. At the end of each problem, my students would see something like this: [LT 5, 2 marks]. This tells my students that I am assessing Learning Target 5 and that there is a method mark and an accuracy mark to be earned within the problem. No surprises for my students, they know exactly what I am looking for on every assessment item they see. (Side note, the marks are for my students more so than for me. My grades are based off how well my students can show they know each LT, not how many points/marks they accumulate.)
Here is an example of a cover sheet for my assessments.
Step #2 - Fill out the Self-Assessment & Reflection Form = The Conversation BEGINS!
All of us have given an assessment, marked it, written feedback all throughout the assessment, handed it back to the students and all they look at was the grade. They never even read the first word of the feedback you wrote. My solution to this speed bump, when I hand back my assessments, there is not a grade on it anywhere. Only my feedback. The conversation has started! Now my students read what I have written. Using this approach, after I distribute my marked assessments to my students I post a Self-Assessment & Reflection form to my students via Google Forms. The main points of this reflection are to have my students "vocalize" where they are in their understanding of each of the assessed learning targets. I do not give them a middle of the road option. They have to choose "I completely get this LT", "I kind of get this LT", "This LT gives me troubles." or "I have no clue how to do this LT." The students also have to tell me what their Self-Assessed grade is and what their Desired Grade is for the assessment. In addition to this and a few questions about what they did outside of class to prepare for the assessment, I have my students reflect on their performance on the assessment. In this reflection, my students that wish to reassess determine which LTs they want to reassess as well as devise a plan for their reassessment that I hold them to following. The conversation continues. I give my students around 15 minutes of class time to fill out the form.
Below is a screenshot of a section of my Google Form.
Step 3 - Merge the files using Autocrat
Once all of my students have filled out the form, I go into the sheet and insert a column for the grade I feel fits what my student has shown in the assessment. Now it is time to merge the information from Sheets into a Google Doc. I like Sheets, but the information gathered is cumbersome to share with students and keep the privacy of information at the same time. This is where autocrat comes in to play. Autocrat is a document merging extension for Sheets. In short, it allows me to take the information provided on the Google Sheets side of the Google Form and send it to an individual Google Doc that is easily shareable with anyone I choose. In this case, my students. This has become a huge timesaver for me. I am able to send my students a Google Doc with their responses to my Form in a few clicks. Continuing the conversation and making it easier for my students to recall their performance on the assessment. What is better, I can share their responses not only with them but with their parents if necessary. All without me doing much more than a few clicks on the keyboard. I will admit, setting up autocrat the first time took a little time, but now I use it all the time whenever I can. (I will talk more about that in a different post.) In the setup of my merge, I have autocrat automatically send each of my students an email with a Google Doc of their responses. The only addition that my students now see is the grade I have given. Surprisingly, my grade does not usually vary too much from their self-assessed grade. When it does, this just deepens the conversation between me and my students.
Step 4 - What now?
Now, I use these documents to continue the conversation with my students. For those students that wish to reassess, the Form and Doc are just the beginning. Usually, my conversations begin with a student replying to the automatically generated response from Autocrat. They tell me which LTs they want to reassess and they provide some dates/times they are available for reassessment. My response usually begins by referring to their plan, or sometimes the lack of a plan, and additional feedback or comments about the assessment and/or their recent performance in class. The conversations have already become much deeper and more meaningful than the simple "I want to reassess these LTs, when is the reassessment?"
I will admit, this seems like it takes a long time to happen. The front-loading of this is where the time is taken. Setting up a template for the Google Form takes about 10 minutes, longer if you are not familiar with Forms. For each additional form, I use the same template and only change the LTs, taking less than the original time to set up the first template. It also takes about 10 minutes to set up a Google Doc template. It only takes this long if you like jazz it up a bit, give the form some color, add the school header at the top, give it a personal touch, etc. Here is an example of what my Google Doc template looks like.
So far, on my end, it takes about 20 minutes of initial set up, about 5 minutes now that my templates are done. Most of the time building the conversation is done in my comments on the assessment and by my students, which is who the learning is focused around anyway. My time can now be devoted to the needs of my students, not meaningless conversations about getting work done or coming to a reassessment. The conversation is now a two-way street with my students in control and not me dictating to them what they need to do and when they need to do it. The conversations that I have with my students are now meaningful and specific to each of my students. Each of my students knows exactly where they are in their understanding of the LTs covered in class so there are no surprises on report cards or during parent conferences. Speaking of conferences, it is very powerful to show a parent these self-assessment & reflection forms that are written by their child in their child's own words. Because of this process, even these conversations have changed tremendously.
Here is what the merged document looks like that gets sent to my students.
