End of year reflection
Is student reflection more effective than a teacher grade?
Pun intended, this has been a year of reflection for me (and my students) about assessment.
Perhaps grading is necessary to motivate students, perhaps it’s not; perhaps grading a young person helps them develop as a writer, perhaps not; and perhaps writing can be assessed in a way that is objectively accurate, perhaps not. I suspect that for each assessment premise, common assumptions about the need for assessing writing in the classroom are entirely flawed, illogical, and lacking empirical support, but am currently at peace with the idea that I cannot change the entire system, only my own classroom practice.
And so, because I do have to issue grades, my students have received lots of A’s this year for completing work and I have used my experience and knowledge to push them to complete good work. But, more importantly, I have tried to shift them towards more reflection upon their writing, their writing habits, and their writing goals.
This shift has culminated in a final, public display of reflection: for this past quarter and semester, I have used student reflections rather than my own writing in report cards. I have experimented with my eleventh graders: giving them a pair of questions about their learning and collecting their responses in a Google Form.
As I have been asked a number of questions from my colleagues about this shift, I thought I would share an imaginary FAQ that collects teacher questions and my answers.
Q. Are the student responses accurate?
A. In a word: yes. I have not asked them to estimate their grades as, in my experience, students have either already worked that out or feel that their grade is lower than reality. But in terms of identifying their strengths and weaknesses, students are generally quite aware and articulate about what they do well and what they need to work on.
Q. What if they handed in a bad reflection?
A. Then I would return it to them and ask for a revision. Rather than question the child’s attitude, I would focus on teaching them, like any other skill, to be more reflective.
Q. Don’t you find that some are better than others?
A. Yes. Some children are better writers than others. But I’ve found that even the “lesser” quality reflections generally more contain detail and insight than I can offer in a report card.
Q. Do you write anything?
A. No, I don’t edit or correct the responses nor do I add to them. The two times I have done this, I thought that the student said everything, and more, that needed to be said about their learning.
Q. So, you just cut and paste their reflection rather than write 100+ comments?
A. Yes. I also rarely, if ever, add a final comment to graded writing assignments. My experience shows that very few students even read comments and almost none learn anything from those comments. I spend my time with students during the writing process, giving them feedback when it can be useful, then asking for students to reflect on their own learning at the end of the assignment. By saving time on unnecessary summative comments, I have become a more effective writing teacher: I suspect that asking students to write reflections is a better use of time than my writing every single comment.
Q. Do the students really learn from their reflections?
A. Great question and one I have as head into the second year of GMWP assessment work. Some goals:
- Even as I tried this year to weave each student’s reflections back into their own writing process, I think I need a more effective system: one that collects their reflections and asks students to consider how best to incorporate their own astute insights into action. Although I am impressed with their insights, I want to think about better ways to help students see these reflections as meaningful forks in the road of their journey towards being better writers.
- I also want to break down reflection into a set of steps or moves so that I not only assign reflection but actually teach the skill to each student.
- Finally, I want to find ways to measure how reflection actually helps improve student writing. It seems evident to me that their reflection is much more valuable than my assessment, but I would like to find ways to justify this practice as demonstrably effective.
Even as I have moved away from my initial questions about assessment, I think I have developed a clearer sense of the relationship between issuing grades and helping students learn: I look forward to another year of reflection, both my own and my students.
