C. Whelan | Secondary | Science
I wasn’t very good at assessing students in class in the past. I could go for weeks teaching a topic and then give an end of topic assessment and move on. Once I had the data, I could discuss it with parents at the parent-teacher meeting. Box ticked. I’m being hard on myself here because during my teacher training, I was never coached about assessing students. Through trial and error, and a bit of help from @dairelambert, I have come up with what I call a weekly review.
You may have noticed that when you announce that there will be a quiz, test or assessment in the next class, there is an immediate sense of impending doom from most students. The words quiz, test and assessment strike fear into them. It feels like a very high stakes scenario. The teacher is going to ask us questions and then grade us on our performance. This grade will be etched into the teachers folder for all of time. Changing the wording of assessment has made a big difference in my classroom. I use the word ‘review’. It seems to have a less ominous feel to it. All of my classes do a weekly review. I explain to the students on day one that they will have a weekly review and that it will aid in their learning and help tweak my teaching.
What is a weekly review?
The weekly review is a selection of questions based on both current topics in class and previous topics. The process of including previous topics is called spacing. Already you can see a serious improvement from my old way of assessing students. I am now revisiting older material as well as current. It takes place at the start of a class on the same day every week. I spread it out from Wednesday to Friday. I started out by asking fifteen questions but I have refined it to ten questions now. The reason for the reduction of questions is time. The first few times I did a weekly review, it took a good chunk out of my class time but as the students get more used to it, they complete them faster. The review is low stakes, students do not get a grade back. This is one of the reasons the students buy into it so quickly. I will delve into this later.
What type of questions do I ask?
This is very important. It has taken me a while to get my head around core questions. Actually, the process of selecting core questions. Junior Cycle science core questions are not too difficult to identify, but selecting them for Leaving Certificate agricultural science, on the other hand, is a totally different beast (we won’t go there, yet). Core questions are the most important questions taken from that particular topic. Understanding what a soil colloid is, for example, is core to understanding the process of flocculation. The review ties in nicely with my ‘do now’ at the start of every class as the core questions are also used here.
Extensions.
Last year, I would correct the weekly reviews and hand them back to each student with a score on them. Although the students were testing themselves, and I thought I was doing the best that I could for them, their thinking stopped as soon as they finished the review a few days earlier. Over the summer I watched a video by Dylan Wiliam where he discusses students becoming detectives with regards to feedback. This was a fantastic idea. This year, I return the reviews to the students with a just number on them. No ticks or X's. This number represents the number of questions that the students got incorrect. Their homework now is to find out which questions they got wrong and correct them on the sheet. Thus the thinking process continues. Remember, memory is the residue of thought (Daniel T. Willingham).
Any downsides?
To be honest, the workload at the start is tough. This year I have given myself a week to correct each review. This is also good for the students as it leaves more time before they revisit the material when they become detectives. I hand out the corrected reviews at the end of class after the following weeks review. You do get quicker at it the more you do it, and as you get a routine going of holding a review every week, it becomes second nature. It is inevitable that students may not be in class the day of the review and catching these students the next class to complete it, as small a task as it is, also adds to workload. Some people will want to save on paper and I totally understand. There are fantastic online platforms out there in which you could do your weekly review on. We are not a device school yet but it looks like it’s going to happen soon so I will transition to an online review going forward.
What do I do with the results?
I do keep my own copy but not in the way I used them years ago. The first thing I do is I get a class average to see where we are. I can also see a quick pattern in which I may need to reteach a topic. If most students answer the question ‘What is flocculation?’ poorly, then I will reteach flocculation.
Why do I do a weekly review?
Students really like it. It builds more routine into my classes. The key is to have it as a low stakes exercise. It looks like a test, feels like a test, but it is a review. All the stress has been taken out of it. My students have commented on how it really keeps them focussed. I have also had students who missed a review ask could they do it when they come into the next class. This is a first for me. The weekly review is a brilliant guide for me as a teacher and can direct me to which way to go next.