Evidence of Learning

I am trying something new with my Grade 9s this unit.  Because of the success I have had with my students self-assessing and reflecting on their learning after each summative, I am trying to attack this unit from both ends.  This time, I have designed an Evidence of Learning sheet that I have shared with each of my students.  I have adapted this from some of the examples of Unit Plans that Myron Dueck discusses in his book: Grading Smarter, Not Harder. I will still have them self-assess and reflect on their learning after the summative, but I am now going to have my students supply evidence of their learning throughout the unit, and most importantly before they sit for the summative.

I will still have evidence in the form of formal, and informal, formative assessments along the way throughout the unit. Now, I am simply having my students supply what they think is evidence that shows their level of understanding of each learning target before they take the end of unit summative.  My thought was simple, or at least it is in my head...we'll see how it turns out in the end.  I set up a table that provides my students with the learning targets for the unit that is broken down into chunks of how we will approach the unit, Quadratics, space for them to use for notetaking and space for them to supply their evidence for each learning target.  Here is what it looks like after one lesson (this is a screenshot of a copy of a student's work):

The learning targets for the unit are clearly identified at the top as well as within each section.  This student has decided to utilize the space for notetaking but they have not provided their evidence of learning, yet.

Here is another students' work from the same class:

As you can see, and much to my delight, both students are using this document as a resource for their notes.  Each student has opted to take their notes in their own way.  Student A has chosen to do more copy & pasting of resources where Student B has taken notes from what has been covered in class.

My students have already asked what constitutes "evidence" for each learning target.  My response has been:

• pictures of your working from homework, classwork, or formative assessments done during the unit
• links to websites you have created to show your learning
• links to other documents that I have provided that contain practice problems where you have shown your working
• pictures of completed activities done in/outside of class
• videos of you describing how/what you know

I may have to adapt this as we progress through the unit, but it seems to have been accepted by my students as clear and reasonable.  I am using Google Classroom and have sent this document to each of my students with an open-ended date of completion only because I am not sure at this moment what date they will take the summative.  I have told them that if they do not supply the evidence of their learning, they will not sit for the summative.  In this case, they will take that time to provide the evidence of their learning and have to make arrangements to sit for the summative at another time.

It is a muddy concept right now, but I am very impressed by my students' willingness to take on this challenge.  I just hope that I am ready for the influx of evidence they will provide.  I am thinking I will be doing formative check-ins throughout the unit and providing comments on their document as feedback so there are not any students that do not have zero evidence in their document when it should be full.

If nothing else, this will be an exploration in my learning as well as my students' learning.  I will keep you posted.