Self-Assessment: Key principles

The most important assessment that goes on in a school isn’t done to students but goes on inside students. As Ron Berger observes ‘Every student walks around with a picture of what is acceptable, what is good enough. Each time he works on something he looks at it and assesses it. Is this good enough? Do I feel comfortable handing this in? Does it meet my standards?’ The challenge for us as history teachers is to ‘get inside students’ heads and turn up the knob that regulates quality and effort. 

It is therefore important to establish the rule “self-assessment before teacher assessment”. Building in self-assessment and a little more time for checking and redrafting makes it more likely that it is their best piece of work. Why should we spend time marking students’ work for spelling and punctuation when they have not even checked it themselves before handing it in? Why should we mark work when the student knows they have rushed it and it is not the best they can do? Why mark work when the students have not even used the success criteria we have provided?

 

Self-Assessment: Strategies 

We need to make sure that students take responsibility for the work that they hand in. Aim to embed the following strategies into your teaching:

1. Provide (or co-construct with the class) minimum standards for the work that is due to be handed in. These can take the form of a checklist. Pupils have to tick off the standards before handing in their work. If the minimum standards are not met, do not mark the work - return the work and ask the pupils to do it properly.

2. Insist that pupils highlight within their work where they have responded to a previous piece of feedback (using the ‘Responded to feedback’ stickers shown earlier)

3. Insist that pupils highlight where they feel they have successfully met specific success criteria.

4. In order to encourage pupils to check their work before handing it in, allocate 10 minutes of lesson time for them to review their work. Provide the pupils with purple pens that they must use to make corrections (this makes it clear if they have made the effort to check their work!) If there are no dictionaries in the classroom ask pupils to circle words that they are unsure of.

 

Peer Assessment: Key Principles

Peer assessment strategies can decrease teacher workload but do have some potential pitfalls. Does the higher ability pupil get the feedback they need if they are paired with a lower ability pupil? Will any assessment be accurate? Will pupils receive the feedback they need to improve?

We tend to avoid involving students in summative assessments. This is because the purpose of peer assessment is to help the individual being assessed to improve their work before they reach the stage of a summative assessment. If peer assessment tasks are carefully modelled, structured and monitored they can reduce the burden on the teacher, increase motivation, improve the social cohesion within the group and encourage students to reflect on the strategies they used to progress. On occasions it might be a peer in the classroom who can find the right language to explain a tricky concept to another student. Also a pupil who is struggling might be more likely to interrupt a peer for clarification or to ask a peer to slow down and go over something again until it is understood

If peer assessment is going to work effectively it is crucial that time is set aside for modelling what effective feedback looks like.  Use a visualiser or camera to display feedback provided to the class and ask the class to discuss whether the comment is useful. Use the outcomes from the discussion to identify the key features of the best feedback and display these regularly before students provide peer feedback. Effective peer assessment also relies on clear success criteria or checklists that students understand and can apply to their own work and the work of others. 

On most occasions, pairing pupils together of similar ability seems to work best. However, for peer tutoring pairing a higher ability student with a less able student can work very well. Dylan Wiliam argues that ‘If the students engaged in peer tutoring are providing elaborated explanations rather than just answers, then there is compelling evidence that both those who give and those who receive help will benefit.’ Make it clear to your students that to be a good historian simply getting a good grade on a task is not enough, you need to understand why and you need to be able to communicate this to others.  Encourage students to focus on the process rather than the outcome, the key is to be able to explain how they arrived at a successful answer.

 

Learning Critiques

Ron Berger has shown the power of two types of peer critique:

• Gallery critique – where the work of every child is displayed – the focus is primarily positive – students select examples that impress them and discuss why.

• In depth critique – the class looks at the work of a single student or group and critique it thoroughly. This provides an opportunity for teaching more specific things such as the use key vocabulary, connectives and sentence starters. Begin with the author of the work explaining the ideas and goals, and explaining what particular aspects of the work they are seeking help with.

Ron Berger’s book also encouraged us to shift the focus of our work in the classroom from quantity to quality and to develop an ethic of craftsmanship and excellence. Quality work needs re-thinking, reworking and polishing.Students who do this should be celebrated for their commitment.Berger suggests that teachers take critique to a whole new level and make critique a habit of mind amongst students and the cornerstone of their classroom practice.

The protocols for peer critique (established by Berger) also form a useful set of guidelines for any form of peer assessment:

• Critique the work not the person.

• Begin with a positive and then move on to constructive criticism.

• Be kind - the environment must feel safe and free from sarcasm.

• Be specific - avoid comments like ‘It’s good’ or ‘I really like it’; these are timewasters.
• Be helpful - the goal is to help the individual and the class, not for the critic to be heard. This, too, wastes time.

• Use I statements – for example – ‘I am confused by this…’

• Use a question format – for example – ‘I am curious why you chose to begin with this’ or ‘Have you considered including…?’

 

Additional Peer Assessment Strategies

• Speed-date peer assessment - students move round the class and meet with 5 or 6 other students. Each ‘date’ is short and has a different focus. The focus for the dialogue about the work needs to be very specific, for example evaluating the effectiveness of key signpost sentences at the start of a paragraph or the clarity and power of the conclusion.

• Peer assessment bingo – criteria can be placed on bingo cards – students can provide feedback to other students in their group – the aim being for everyone to get a full house by responding to the feedback and working collaboratively to meet the criteria in all the boxes.

• Pre-marking checklist – before a student submits their work to the teacher to be marked it has to be ‘signed off’ by a peer – or the group. Remember to create a measure of accountability for the student doing the peer marking or the group. 

• Students complete practice exam questions for homework. In the next lesson, in groups of 4 pupils review responses and discuss what the best answer would be – they then compile the best composite paper.

• C5B4ME (an extended version of C3B4ME) – before a student is allowed to ask the teacher for help, assistance must have been sought from 5 other places, including peers in the class within their group.