Where Am I Going Overview

OVERVIEW OF “WHERE AM I GOING?”

Read the following excerpt from Jan Chappuis’ article on “Seven Strategies of Assessment for Learning.”

Strategy 1: Provide a clear and understandable vision of the learning target.

Begin by giving students a vision of the learning destination. Share with your students the learning targets, objectives, or goals either at the outset of instruction or before they begin an independent practice activity.

There are three ways to do this: (1) state the learning target as is, (2) convert the learning target into student-friendly language, or (3) for learning targets assessed with a rubric, convert the rubric to student‐friendly language. Introduce the language of quality to students. Check to make sure students understand what learning target is at the heart of the lesson by asking, “Why are we doing this activity? What are we learning?”

Strategy 2: Use examples and models of strong and weak work.

Help students sort through what is and isn’t quality work by using strong and weak models from anonymous student work, examples from life beyond school, and your own work. Begin with examples that demonstrate strengths and weaknesses related to problems students commonly experience, especially the problems that most concern you. Ask students to analyze these samples for quality and then to justify their judgments. Use only anonymous work. When you engage students in analyzing examples or models, they develop a vision of what the knowledge, understanding, skill, product, or performance looks like when it’s executed well.

Model creating a product or performance yourself. Show students the true beginnings, the problems you encounter, and how you think through decisions along the way. Don’t hide the development and revision part, or students will think they are doing it wrong when it is messy at the beginning, and they won’t know how to work through the rough patches.

What are some important points about each of the strategies?