Did they learn anything?

Pinterest Link

No seriously, did they?  Or did they game the system?


My biggest pet peeve as a teacher (besides cheating) is when students do their work out of a desire for points.  When they game the system, do what they think they must, so they can move along.  Checking for learning is how I beat them at their game.  My biggest strategy is cold-calling, and I will keep doing it this year.  I like this info-graphic quite a bit, and I plan to diversify my learning checks a bit more using some of these suggestions.

How I want to incorporate this:
One particular cloud sticks out to me - "Compare: Compare your work to an 'A' work."  Thanks to my school's collaborative learning teams and my wonderful colleague who shares a classroom with me, I have been so much better at this in recent years.  One thing she ALWAYS does is have an exemplar for students to see what the end product should demonstrate.  We even gave students examples of different levels of achievement with certain assignments.  This seems obvious, but when I was a new teacher I struggled to add exemplars because it takes more time (who has more time!?).   

Hold up though, this isn't really my point.  Anybody can do this and check for their students' learning without an initial exemplar.  Why not take that final step in a lesson to have students reflect on how their work stacked up compared to an A?  Take the 5 minutes and give students some closure by posting or distributing an "A" assignment. Ask students to rate themselves or explain the differences in their work and the exemplar.  As teachers, we should have a few exemplars or else we just got checked - better reteach.  I also love how this helps students because the "A" work isn't an example from a textbook.

Start this habit right away - first few weeks.  Make it the norm for students to reflect on their performance.  Loop the reflection in later by asking them to analyze how the reflections have changed the way they approach learning.  If we can continue to compare and reflect we make learning authentic and meaningful.

Teach kids how to teach themselves.

Side-note:

Pinterest is full of great links to teaching ideas.  I find myself constantly adding links to my "teaching board" but never really going back to those links.  I plan to use this space to explore some of those great resources I find.