“Assessing and Evaluating Students’ Learning: How Do You Know What They Have Learned?”

“Assessing and evaluating students learning” supplied many useful ways to assess students, go figure. Many of the ways that it suggested I am used to seeing, either from first hand experience when my teachers used them on me, or in the different ed classes I have taken that also suggested similar ways to asses students. One section from the article I liked was avoiding too many “correct answer” tests, when there is one single right answer and I student simply looks for it without much thought let alone critical thinking. In my opinion, English is a subject that is all about discussion and debate. A literary piece will have a different interpretation to everyone who reads it. Students should be given the chance to come up with a conclusion of their own and support it with evidence. So, to narrow questions to a single right answer does not appear to make a whole lot of sense. Now there is a time and place for “correct answer” tests, but people, myself especially included, should not use them as often as they are used.

One section in the article that always worries me is student to student peer review. The article suggest teaching students how to give feedback on their fellow students work. The list to follow to give good feedback is a great list, but I have seen students lead astray by other students on what to change in their paper or other assignment they are working on. Peer review is affective, everyone should have their work looked over by a new set of eyes, but teachers should be careful how often, and how much feedback students give to each other so “wrong” corrections are not made. A possible alternative is have a small group formed where the top achieving students in the class are the peer reviewers and they look over the lower achieving students work.