Written by Christine Witcher A great assignment is open-ended. A closed-ended question is a closed door. Open-ended assignments are an invitation to think critically and creatively about a topic. There is a time and place in instruction and assessment for closed-ended questions - we need to know what our students can recall and understand before we know they're ready to move on to higher-order tasks. But the great assignments, the one's we share with our colleagues and the ones that grow our students confidence, are open-ended. A great criteria is singular, challenging, and a bit subjective. As teachers, we are subject area experts. One of our tasks is to help our students become experts themselves. This means that we must clearly define for them what excellent work looks like. We do this with our assignment criteria. By distilling our assignments down to smaller, bite-sized tasks, we can bring the focus in on one, single criteria. Our instruction and feedback, then, can elevate student work and allow for students to channel their effort into mastering one skill at a time. It's the classic argument of depth over breadth.
When we add a step of formative feedback into the work process, we allow ourselves the opportunity to increase the challenge level of the criteria. We can also make the criteria more subjective, which moves students farther down the path towards being subject-area experts.
0 Comments
Written by Christine Witcher When a student creates an account they will be asked to choose one of three options:
When a student selects I am a student under the age of 18, they will be required to enter a Consent Code before registering for the site. To generate a consent code for a student:
The consent code will be good for 2 hours. By sharing the consent code you are acting in loco parentis to give consent for your students to register for the site. You should read our Privacy Policy, Terms of Use, and COPPA Notice before doing so. Written by Christine Witcher Flash Summary 1. Set up an assignment, choose a single criteria 2. Enroll your students and have them upload work samples 3. Monitor the review session 4. Intervene with students who need help First you'll decide when to run a review session. I find that it works best early in the work process, generally around a first draft or sometimes earlier. I also prefer keeping the work samples to a paragraph or so. Then, you'll set up your assignment and decide on a feedback criteria like, This work sample includes sufficient detail to fully support the claim or This work sample presents an algebraic proof that is both complete and elegant. Notice that both of these criteria are a bit subjective and are challenging enough that students will have to think critically to make an informed judgement.
Once your students have uploaded their anonymous worksample, you'll be able to: |
ArchivesCategories |