One of the largest challenges for me in regard to student assessment in my particular context is mainly about my inability (for a variety of reasons) to provide feedback as quickly and as specifically as I would like to with my students.

Feedback is a critical ingredient in successful assessment, student motivation and growth. As Anderson posits in Chapter 14: Teaching in an Online Learning Context, ‘[w]e know from research on assessment that timely and detailed feedback provided throughout, and as near in time as possible to the performance of the assessed behaviour, is the most effective in providing motivation, shaping behaviour, and developing mental constructs’ (Anderson, 2008, p. 352). This is a particularly difficult area of assessment for me, especially this year.

My Context:
I am currently teaching thirty grade 5 students, most of whom are 10 years old. My class composition is actually a bit dreamy this year in comparison to my past teaching years. I have one special needs student on an IEP (she has cerebral palsy and a full time CEA with her). I have 8 ESL students, two of these learners are very competent students and have strong literacy skills. The remaining 6 ESL students are in need of substantial support in their learning. For the first time I think in my career, I do not have a behaviour designated student in my classroom (which is a nice break considering I had 5 serious behaviour students in my classroom last year). I have two students on Learning Plans who are working below grade level in both literacy and numeracy areas. These thirty students are a cohesive, caring and hard working group of young people and I do feel a bit guilty as I watch my grade six teaching colleagues across the hall struggle with the composition of their classrooms. I am hopeful that with this particular group of students, I may be able to take my delivery of assessment results and feedback to a much more personal level for them, which I have not previously been able to achieve, other than when I was a Learning Assistance teacher working in small groups or in one on one settings with students.

Even with a really amazing group of students, there is simply not enough time in the day to engage in conversations with every student about how they are progressing. I have just now completed my usual start up battery of assessments. I have marked them all and I am beginning to use the whole class data to shape my focus in our current unit work. I feel like I can and do effectively use this type of assessment data to shape my instruction and target areas that the majority of the students need support with. The other side of this coin however, which involves communicating individual results to the students themselves to help them goal set and progress in their weaker areas, has not yet happened and quite honestly, may not happen this year, at least not to the extent that I would like it to. Even with a stellar group of students, I cannot justify giving the class a ‘busy work’ type task so that I can call students over to speak to them one on one about the results of an assessment. I have completed a three strand diagnostic math assessment, a whole class reading assessment, and also a ‘school wide write.’ I would need to spend days of busy work assignments to give myself enough one on one time to ever be able to convey this important information to my students. In the past, we have been provided with two full days of release time from the school district to use for assessment and collaboration purposes. We were told promptly at the start of this school year that the collaboration and assessment budget has been cut to zero and that there would be no release time of this nature provided for teachers at all this year. I used to use those two days to pull my students one at a time from class in order to have them read a passage from my reading assessment aloud to me while I track and observe their oral fluency habits. I would then give them instant results of their read aloud and help them goal set for improvement, and go over any other literacy assessments that I had completed by that time. Completing these one on one student meetings would take an entire school day, and I often did not finish the entire class in that single day and I would need to use a bit of my own prep time to finish up the last of the students. I do not see how I am going to be able to have these important conversations with students this year.

At this time, my students are receiving feedback from me mostly in the form of a mark and an anecdotal comment. Whenever I mark an assignment that lends itself well to advice and direct feedback, I try to let the students know at least one piece of criteria that they met well, something that they could have done better, and something for them to consider for next time. This takes me a long time to do, but I know how important it is and I do not do it for every little assignment. I also try as much as possible while I am circulating around the classroom during independent working times to check in with as many students as I can to do a spot check and provide some direct feedback. I do worry that with this age group, not all of the students take the time to read what I have written on their past work. My concerns in regard to this grew when I read in this week’s article that studies do in fact show that many students do not read or possibly do not understand the feedback that teachers provide them with (Gibbs & Simpson, 2005, p. 10). My students that are keen and intrinsically motivated come into the classroom in the morning and head to the shelf where we keep our notebooks and duotangs to see how they did on tasks from the day before, but this is just a handful of students.
If I am being honest, this week’s article left me feeling a little bit low. I truly do consider myself to be a lifelong learner and when I take on new learning whether it be a full 13 week course or a half day workshop, I am there to get all that I can get out of that learning experience. I cannot imagine personally trying to work out the hidden curriculum and then allocating my energy and focus accordingly in order to get the highest mark possible with the least amount of effort (Gibbs & Simpson, 2005, p.3). I would like to think that my own students are not ‘working the system’ in this way, but after reading this information, I know that I will now be consciously taking a closer look at the way in which my students are approaching their assignments. As a student, I greatly appreciate direct feedback and constructive criticism. As a teacher, I am always looking for ways to provide this feedback to my own students more consistently and effectively.

I have a professional goal this year to increase the amount of direct and meaningful feedback that I am able to provide my students with. Although I have not yet decided for sure, I have been considering using an online tool such as Edmodo with my students to serve this purpose. I have already received permission from administration to try it out, we have discussed it as a class and the students think that it would be worthwhile trying. My next step is to work out the logistics, inform parents and obtain permission from them in order to move forward with the plan. Two of my students do not have access to either technology or the internet at home, so I will need to provide them with time at school to connect up so that they too are able to benefit from the online feedback. I am hoping that this inclusion of technology in our learning equation will get the students more actively looking for their assessment results and feedback data, internalizing that information and taking action to improve their skills and strengthen their marks in the process. This sounds a bit of an oxymoron, but I really do see technology as a tool through which I can increase the amount of direct and worthwhile feedback that I can provide my face-to-face students with.

References:
Anderson, T. (2008b). Teaching in an online learning context. In Anderson, T. & Elloumi, F. Theory and practice of online learning. Athabasca University. Retrieved from http://www.aupress.ca/books/120146/ebook/14_Anderson_2008-Theory_and_Practice_of_Online_Learning.pdf

Gibbs, G., & Simpson, C. (2005). Conditions under which assessment supports students’ learning. Learning and Teaching in Higher Education, 1(1), 3-31. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/fast/pdfs/Gibbs%20and%20Simpson%202004-05.pdf