Assessing and Evaluating Students' Learning

Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning

Beach, Appleman, Hynds, and Wilhelm’s “Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning: How Do You Know What They Have Learned?” (Handout) 

 “Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots.”

– Frank A. Clark

In this chapter, I especially appreciate the helpful tips that clearly specify the interpretive strategies for students to show their understanding of Literature. Case in point:  Elaboration of retelling of story events. When students are asked to elaborate on the details of certain events, they are better prepared to interpret more than just the retelling of a story, but the characters’ beliefs and attitudes. Teachers are expecting students to do more than summarizing. Teachers want to see that students are employing critical thinking skills and understanding the different character’s perspectives.

Providing “Reader-based descriptive responses” is a technique that Dr. Beth uses in her class. Instead of waiting to the end of a project to get feedback, Dr. Beth uses feedback during the writing project. Peer evaluation is another form of feedback that is helpful, it gets a student to think differently about their work, and how they can revise or reformulate.

Feedback is important for effective, constructive learning. However, feedback needs to be exercised in a responsible manner. “You need to frame your feedback by considering a student’s Zone of Proximal Development (Vygotsky, 1978) so that you are not overwhelming students with overly sophisticated responses” (229). The jury is still out for me, on peers giving feedback to each other. I am just not sure it is the right thing to do. Some students can be sensitive or shy about their own work, and maybe the other student doesn’t quite offer constructive criticism. I think it is a tricky area to navigate. According to this chapter, modeling feedback so that it will “foster self-assessing and discussion of the topic so that the students formulate and develop ideas for revision” (230), is one way that I would agree makes sense. The aforementioned method puts the owner of the work on the offense, instead of the defense. (Super bowl this weekend!)

Figure 13.1 on page 231, displays a template writing assignment and the criteria used to evaluate student work, it is thorough, easy to understand, and interesting. I would surely like to use this same model in my classroom. “The assignment handout gives students itemized expectations, which will also be used as the grading criteria, clearly articulating the writing task through narrative expectations . . .” I think the template is a wonderful way to keep students on track and working purposefully.