EDUC115N Review #4

I am eager to share some thoughts that have come in this class about ability grouping, but I am going to save that for my next blog post. This one will be short and it will be about assessment.

In the How to Learn Math class that I taking one of the ideas discussed is the value of formative assessment. Now, teachers at my school are relatively progressive about assessment, so they are already quite aware of these ideas, but there are a couple of notions that deserve to be heard again and again.

but it's a valuable story

1.  Feedback is more valuable to a student's learning than a grade. "Students who only got feedback scored significantly higher than ones given a grade or a grade and feedback." The best thing you can do for your students is to ditch the grade and give them diagnostic feedback.
2. Students need the opportunity to practice self and peer assessment. What would this look like in the math classroom? Students given access to the learning goal of a given lesson and assess where they are in their understanding. Then students are given the opportunity to work with each other, problem solve together, discuss solutions and peer assess each others ability according to the lessons learning goal. 
3. After low achieving students spend time discussing and assessing themselves and others they will start behaving like high achieving students. 

This is what assessment in the math classroom needs to look like. It is tradition and the need to classify and group students that insist on having big unit exams with grades given to students. These are not necessary practices, and are in fact harmful because they create a fixed math mindset in students.

I know that this is controversial, but wait until the next blog post...