I'm a Professor in the Department of Elementary Education at Rhode Island College and principal investigator of KITES (Kits in Teaching Elementary Science), a K-6 science reform project. I teach several different courses including elementary science methods.
As a result of my work with KITES and a mathematics reform initiative in the East Bay region of Rhode Island, I am working on ways to help preservice teachers understand assessment of student learning.
During one of the teaching experiences in the elementary science methods course, preservice teachers work in pairs with a group of 10-12 elementary students as they design and conduct a 7-hour standards-based unit. Students apply an approach to teaching recommended by Paul Black and Wynne Harlen in Nuffield Primary Science curriculum. (See http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/primaryscience/index.html). To understand what and how their students are learning, preservice teachers collect assessment information from two children with different abilities. They use a wide range of assessment methods (e.g., systematic teacher observations, checklists, student self-assessments, performance assessment, student work assessed using a rubric, continuous Know-Wonder-Learn charting). Periodically, they examine student work together, trying to make sense of the information. At the end of the investigation, they interpret all of the collected information, explain in writing how their students thinking has changed (or not changed), and propose next steps in teaching and learning.
To involve students in setting criteria, our inservice and preservice teachers use the process suggested in the publication, "Developing and Using Criteria with Students" by Katherine Gregory, Caren Cameron, and Anne Davies (Connections Publishing, Merville British Columbia, 1997). I highly recommend this practical 70-page book to both inservice and preservice teachers. The book contains a simple 4-step collaborative process for setting criteria and ten ways to assess without putting a mark on a paper.
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