Students can be given a voice in assessing a wide array of the work they are doing. They can also be reflective about how well they are performing the role of learner. Here are some of the basic modes that self-evaluation can take.
Evaluating understanding / mastery.
Metacognition occurs when a student is genuinely learning new material. When she is reading, for instance, it is critically important for her to be aware of how well she understands what she is reading. This will steer what she does next. If she doesn’t understand a word or a phrase, for instance, making note of it can lead her to dig deeper and do some research, or write down a question to ask her teacher or her study group when she gets a chance. Simply assessing her level of understanding can cause her to recognize the need to get help from others.
Assessing her understanding can be done in very simple language. One scheme is to use a 1 - 5 scale, where 5 means “I can teach this”, and 3 means “I still have some questions”. A form using this system is shown below.
Another, even simpler approach is the stoplight analogy:
“G” stands for green, meaning she is good to go and can continue on to the next topic,
“Y” stands for yellow, meaning she needs to slow down and pay better attention to the details,
“R” stands for red, meaning “stop, I need help”.
As always with feedback, this kind of self-evaluation should not be graded so that the student’s appraisal of her work will be honest. Self-assessing understanding is discussed more fully in “The Role of Student Work”.
Evaluating the learning process.
In this form of self-evaluation, the student is not being asked how well she understands the material, but rather how well she did the work of trying to learn it. It asks whether she is solving problems completely, completing an assignment by a given deadline, making corrections as needed, and whether she did everything she was able to do by herself. Because this evaluation is based on more external criteria than that of understanding and mastery, it is more appropriate for it to be a part of a student’s grade.
Such an assessment can be made for each piece of student work. It can also be made for a learning contract, as described below.
Here is an example of a rubric that combines the assessment of mastery and process. Note the student-friendly language used in both scales. (Thanks to David Allen of Evanston Township High School for the next three forms.)
Student reflections.
The modes discussed above are useful for self-evaluation of many curricular-based aspects of student work. However, there are other, less quantifiable aspects that need to be assessed as well, such as character traits. Tenacity, collaboration, and self-directedness are all vital to learning. One way to assess these traits is to have students answer a set of questions about their performance in class, as described in the section on “Implementing Grade Conferences” below.
But often, the most appropriate approach is to have students write about their own perceptions of how well they are doing as learners. The central task in guiding students in this kind of work is to balance offering enough direction to guide them in self-reflection, with keeping things open-ended enough to encourage creativity in their writing.
It is also important to find the right frequency of asking for self-reflections. In particular, if required too often, feedback becomes a pro forma exercise and not as meaningful for the student or you. Varying the scope and format of the feedback can also help keep the process fresh.
Here is another example of guidelines for reflection, this time at the end of an AP Psych unit, after students have completed the unit test. In this case, the students are asked to evaluate how well they mastered the material, how well they prepared for the unit test, and how well they performed several “personal outcomes”, like time management and self-directedness. In addition to assessing these items quantitatively, they are also asked to write about them.
The second page asks them to further discuss what they will do next, based on the results of this unit. How will they learn from their mistakes? How will they improve how they prepare for the next unit test?
