Self-assessment - Artifacts 4, 5, 6 & 9
The next step to developing metacognition was having students reflect on their performance on an assessment in relation to their understanding of each learning objective. This is an important part of metacognitive awareness as it “encourages independent learning and prompts students to become more aware of their progress” (Joseph, 2010, p. 102). Previously I handed back their summative assessments with comments and a grade. I noticed that most of my students just saw the grade. They would either share their grade with pride or look disappointed and put it away in their folder. Either way I was not sure if they were actually using the feedback on the assessment to improve or recognize their misunderstandings. This informed my decision to use class time to teach self-assessment using individual quiz performance and unit objectives.
The quiz self-assessment reflection, Artifact 4, was a teacher led activity that modeled for students how to identify which objectives matched with each quiz question. I prefaced the activity with the explanation that what we were doing would allow them to better prepare and assess their own understanding before the next assessment. I had the unit objective outline displayed on the SMART board while students had graded quizzes in front of them. I then explained the activity to the whole class. We went through each question and identified, as a class, what objective was assessed. I modeled the first two questions by reading them aloud to determine what each was asking. I paused on keywords or concepts within the question. Next I referenced the unit objectives and I spoke aloud, “if this were your paper, this is how you might use the objectives to determine what objective each question assess?” For each quiz question I had the students write the objective number adjacent to it on their own quizzes. For the rest of the quiz questions I had them work with a partner to write down which objective they thought matched with each question. I walked around to observe and asked them questions about how they were identifying which objective matched with each question. Once I noticed most students were finishing up I regrouped the class so we could complete the activity as a whole class. After coming to a consensus on which objectives matched with each question as a class I brought the activity to a close. I explained that the function of this activity was to identify which objectives they are able to preform well on and the ones they need to focus their study time on before taking the unit exam. They were then asked to answer two questions for homework:
Answer the following questions based on your Quiz & Unit 6 Outline.
What objectives do you feel you have mastered?
What objectives do you need to focus your study time on?
Having students use their quizzes with the unit objectives already matched to each question was a good first step to having them self-assess their strengths and weakness. I then constructed Table 1 of Artifact 4 to show how students responded to these two questions. They answered whether they felt they mastered or that they needed more time to study for each objective in the quiz objective key (Artifact 4). This table showed that students were much less confident with in objectives that required them to write out chemical equations and manipulate them in comparison to the objectives that required them to identify specific terms, definitions, answers or identities (Artifact 4, objectives key: 6.1.a, 6.1.b, & 6.3(I)). I then used these data to show students evidence that supports the importance of self-assessing their learning. After the students took the unit 6 exam, I organized the performance on the unit 6 exam into a table. I asked students to compare the quiz reflection, Table 1 (Artifact 5), to the exam performance graph, Table 2 (Artifact 5). On the white board I displayed questions that required them to reflect on the connections between the two graphs. By making this connection more evident to students I hoped to support their progress in becoming more metacognitive in their learning processes by getting them to interact with quantitative evidence from their own performance.
These data from the pre-quiz reflection (Artifact 4) suggested that, overall, students had a good sense of what material they had an understanding and what material they need to continue to study. Next I had students interpret Table 1 and Table 2 of Artifact 5, as shown below, using the activity handout shown in Document 1 (Artifact 6).
The quiz self-assessment reflection, Artifact 4, was a teacher led activity that modeled for students how to identify which objectives matched with each quiz question. I prefaced the activity with the explanation that what we were doing would allow them to better prepare and assess their own understanding before the next assessment. I had the unit objective outline displayed on the SMART board while students had graded quizzes in front of them. I then explained the activity to the whole class. We went through each question and identified, as a class, what objective was assessed. I modeled the first two questions by reading them aloud to determine what each was asking. I paused on keywords or concepts within the question. Next I referenced the unit objectives and I spoke aloud, “if this were your paper, this is how you might use the objectives to determine what objective each question assess?” For each quiz question I had the students write the objective number adjacent to it on their own quizzes. For the rest of the quiz questions I had them work with a partner to write down which objective they thought matched with each question. I walked around to observe and asked them questions about how they were identifying which objective matched with each question. Once I noticed most students were finishing up I regrouped the class so we could complete the activity as a whole class. After coming to a consensus on which objectives matched with each question as a class I brought the activity to a close. I explained that the function of this activity was to identify which objectives they are able to preform well on and the ones they need to focus their study time on before taking the unit exam. They were then asked to answer two questions for homework:
Answer the following questions based on your Quiz & Unit 6 Outline.
What objectives do you feel you have mastered?
What objectives do you need to focus your study time on?
Having students use their quizzes with the unit objectives already matched to each question was a good first step to having them self-assess their strengths and weakness. I then constructed Table 1 of Artifact 4 to show how students responded to these two questions. They answered whether they felt they mastered or that they needed more time to study for each objective in the quiz objective key (Artifact 4). This table showed that students were much less confident with in objectives that required them to write out chemical equations and manipulate them in comparison to the objectives that required them to identify specific terms, definitions, answers or identities (Artifact 4, objectives key: 6.1.a, 6.1.b, & 6.3(I)). I then used these data to show students evidence that supports the importance of self-assessing their learning. After the students took the unit 6 exam, I organized the performance on the unit 6 exam into a table. I asked students to compare the quiz reflection, Table 1 (Artifact 5), to the exam performance graph, Table 2 (Artifact 5). On the white board I displayed questions that required them to reflect on the connections between the two graphs. By making this connection more evident to students I hoped to support their progress in becoming more metacognitive in their learning processes by getting them to interact with quantitative evidence from their own performance.
These data from the pre-quiz reflection (Artifact 4) suggested that, overall, students had a good sense of what material they had an understanding and what material they need to continue to study. Next I had students interpret Table 1 and Table 2 of Artifact 5, as shown below, using the activity handout shown in Document 1 (Artifact 6).