Self-Assessment

I have been doing a lot of thinking about how to engage my learners in their own learning and how to get them to become independent, self-directed learners.

For years the students in my class have been independent and self-directed.  At the beginning of the year I moved to a new school and found that the school's assessment expectations were slightly different  to what I was used to and I had to change the way I had previously done things. In order to fit things in I ended up dropping the amount of self-assessment in my programme.  There was still aspects of it appearing but not as much as I would have liked.  This has had an impact on my expectations of my students and where I would expect them to be.  So things need to change!!

I began by reading a book "Self Assessment for Self Starters" by Merrick Brewer to reinspire me and to remind me of some of the things that I had previoulsy done.

Self assessment allows students to take more risks, develop greater confidence, interact with their peers and to take control of their learning.

So after reading the book and going through things I had previously done, I decided to start with my mathematics programme.  We are currently working on Algebra. I gave the students questions at each curriculum level to answer (some had Level 1, 2 and 3 and others Level 2, 3 and 4).  I then marked them and highlighted the questions the students got wrong with pink for think and the questions that were correct, Gold (yellow) for Go (this is a change from what I previously did which was "Glow" - yellow highlighter and "Grow" - green highlighter - but the pink and yellow are the ones we are required to use).

I then gave the students a sheet with the expectations on them and the students had to highlight what they got correct and what they need to work on.

The students then decided what they needed to work on the most and opted into workshops that I will be holding.
This allows students to personalise their own learning.
Students then set a smart goal for the unit.  This was glued into their new learning journal with the math test beside it.
To say that they have met a goal they have to meet the Fast Finshers '3 steps to success' (I will post about this at a later date).

At this stage, students are excited (but we haven't started the workshops yet - so that may change).